The Abundance of Solid and Striped Sub-typed Batillaria minima and Their Distribution Across Different Substrates
By: Katie Rumora & Anh Tran
Abstract: The black horn snails, Batillaria minima, are found in the Caribbean, from Bermuda to Florida to the Bahamas. The Marine Ecology classes of 2004, 2006, and 2008 observed and carried out various studies on the black horn snails at a quarry located in Layton, Florida on Long Key Island across from mile marker 69 on US Highway 1 going Northwest. Particularly in 2008’s study, they looked into the correlation of the snails’ distribution against the different colors, distance from the shoreline, and the different substrates present. Their results showed that there was no main effect of the color and distance, or an interacting effect of distance and substrate. However, there was an interacting effect of distance and color. During our preliminary observation we made an observation of a substrate, algae, which was not tested before. Using this, we wanted to follow up on 2008 study on the number of colored snails, solid or striped, against four different substrates, gravel, rocky, sediment, and the newly observed, algae. We hypothesized that there would be a higher density of snail on the algae. A 4x2 repeated measure ANOVA demonstrated no significant interaction between the type of substrate present and the density of the colored snails. The analysis also showed no main effect of substrate, but there was a main effect on the color of snail and its density. These results did not support our hypothesis, but provide great information to further this investigation.