| From a faunal list of 216 of the most common species of prosobranch gastropods at Beaufort, North Carolina, a group of 87 species was selected on the basis of known life cycles and geographic distributions. The larval types were categorized as teleplanic, actaeplanic, or nonplanktonic. The presence of these species in eight approximately equivalent latitudinal zones along the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean was then recorded (Scheltema, 1989). This list has been used, in the present paper, in three different ways: to identify homogeneity or heterogeneity of spatial distribution of the three biological groups; to record the presence of species in geographic sectors defined on the basis of average annual sea surface temperature; and to compare, at the... |
