Wave-Swept Shore: The Rigors of Life on a Rocky Coast by Mimi Koehl & Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld

Author:Mimi Koehl & Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0520238125
Publisher: University of California Press

47 The holdfasts and stumps of stipes of sea palms (plate 45) that have been mowed down by a wave-borne log scraping its way across the rocks.

48 A wave-tossed log crashing into the shore like a battering ram created the stark, bare patch of pale rock in the middle of the rich carpet of life on the shore.

Diverse Architectures Work

The body forms of those individuals in a population that successfully compete with their neighbors for the resources they need to grow, and that survive the surf and escape predation long enough to reproduce, are represented in the next generation of that species to populate the coast. Thus, generation after generation, natural selection gradually weeds out the bad body forms, leaving behind those just good enough to hang on, grow, and produce offspring. This process of natural selection has, over the ages, sculpted the shapes of the plants and animals that survive on the shore.

As we step back and once again survey the smorgasbord of living forms clinging to the rocks of a wave-swept shore, we now see with an engineer’s eye which forms are subjected to large hydrodynamic forces and which ones are not. We can recognize the body shapes that experience high tissue stresses, and we can predict the consequences of pulling or pushing on the different types of biomaterials from which they are built. Tall, slim algae made of stretchy, resilient material sway back and forth in the waves, whereas short, wide barnacles with their stiff, calcified shells sit unmoved as the water crashes onto them. By studying the mechanics of these plants and animals, we come to understand how such diverse structures can all function in a wave-swept environment.

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