First visual record of rare purple dogwhelks (Nucella lapillus) on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Ecology, Marine Biology, Zoology
- Keywords
- dogwhelk, Nucella lapillus, color, snail, rocky intertidal, rareness, temperature
- Copyright
- © 2016 Ehlers et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. First visual record of rare purple dogwhelks (Nucella lapillus) on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2486v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2486v1
Abstract
The dogwhelk Nucella lapillus is a rocky intertidal gastropod of the North Atlantic coast. Individual shell color varies. Common colors range between white and brown, with darker dogwhelks being more affected by heat stress than lighter-colored conspecifics. Other reported shell colors are black, mauve, pink, yellow, and orange from European coasts, red and grey from the Bay of Fundy coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (Canada), and purple, black, gray, yellow, and orange from the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts (USA), with purple being considered as a rare color. On the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, dogwhelks are active from April until November, but information on dogwhelk shell color is missing for this coast. On 16 June 2016, we found two purple dogwhelks in the mid-to-high intertidal zone of a moderately wave-exposed rocky shore near Duncans Cove, on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia while collecting dogwhelks (n= 1000) for manipulative field experiments. All other dogwhelks collected on that day were of common white and brown colors. During earlier dogwhelk collections in Atlantic Nova Scotia (between 2011-2013) and field surveys in Duncans Cove (between 2014-2016), we did not find any purple dogwhelks, indicating the rareness of this color in that region. Interestingly, the purple dogwhelks were detected on a relatively cool day (12.3 ± 0.4 °C, mean ± se, n= 96 temperature measurements) compared to the intertidal temperatures of all other survey days (≥ 18.2 ± 0.5 °C), suggesting that purple dogwhelks may find it less thermally stressful to venture out of crevices and macroalgal cover under relatively cool temperatures. Our observations provide the first visual record of rare purple dogwhelks on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.
Author Comment
This is version 1 of the manuscript entitled "First visual record of purple dogwhelks (Nucella lapillus) on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada" and created on 27 September 2016.
Supplemental Information
Figure 1. A purple dogwhelk, Nucella lapillus (L. 1758)
Picture taken near Duncans Cove (44°29’41.22”N, 63° 31’26.66”W), Halifax on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada on 16 June 2016 (picture credit: Julius A. Ellrich).
Intertidal Temperatures 12-Aug-2014
Intertidal temperatures measured by temperature loggers 1 & 2 on 12-Aug-2014 every 30 minutes
Intertidal Temperatures 01-Sep-2015
Intertidal temperatures measured by temperature loggers 1 & 2 on 01-Sep-2015 every 30 minutes
Intertidal Temperatures 12-Jun-2016
Intertidal temperatures measured by temperature loggers 1 & 2 on 12-Jun-2016 every 30 minutes
Intertidal Temperatures 21-Aug-2016
Intertidal temperatures measured by temperature loggers 1 & 2 on 21-Aug-2016 every 30 minutes