An introduction to the zoogeography of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico with reference to the invertebrate fauna.

Date

1953

Authors

Hedgpeth, J.W.

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Abstract

The estuarine and neritic waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico, especially along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, are characterized by broad ranges of environmental factors, providing conditions favorable to temperate organisms in winter and tropical organisms in summer. The fauna is a mixture of temperate Atlantic and tropical Caribbean elements, with a very low endemic component. The distribution of many of the Atlantic species occurring the northern Gulf is characteristically disjunct, they being absent from southern Florida or represented there by stunted individuals or reduced populations. Many of these species were apparently continuous in distribution across northern Florida during high stands of the sea in late interglacial periods of the Pleistocene.

Description

p. 207-224.

Keywords

estuaries, environmental factors, biogeography, marine invertebrates, ecology, penaeid shrimp, ecosystems

Citation