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Browse the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

SEASHORE ANIMALS

Contents


SEASHORE ANIMALS

The animals of the seashore include those species confined to or spreading into the intertidal zone, that narrow fringe of the coastline over which the tide rises and falls twice daily. The tides give a unique character to the ecology of the shore. A sequence of highly adapted animals and plants, of many different classes and life forms, girdles the whole land mass. Shores are divided first and most fundamentally into the two categories, hard and soft. Few species overlap between the two and the conditions of life in the two habitats are utterly different.

Co-creator

John Edward Morton, M.SC.(N.Z.), PH.D., D.SC. (LOND.), Professor and Head of Department of Zoology, University of Auckland.

Next Part: Hard Shores