Talk:Cerithidea decollata

Name

Shouldn't the article be listed under the snail's English-language name? Salopian (talk) 03:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Number of tides per day

This article refers to 'diurnal tides', and talks about high tide and low tide being insufficient to flood the ground some of the time, a situation discernable to these snails in advance. It doesn't make sense that low tide is not sufficient to flood the habitat, because you wouldn't expect a low tide to cause flooding, only a high tide would cause flooding.

However, I believe this usage is almost consistent with what are called 'semidiurnal tides' wherein there are two high tides and two low tides in a day, of different amplitudes, and the snails would then be adapting to conditions where the 'high high tide' and the 'low high tide' may or may not flood the ground.

Seeking further information about tides in the handy article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide reveals that there really are places on earth with only one high and one low tide each day, and these are indeed called 'diurnal tides'. The coast of east africa (containing the habitat of the snails in question) is shown as an area of 'mixed tides' in which there may be diurnal and semidiurnal tides varying at different sites on the coastline.

As it seems quite crucial to understanding the fascinating behaviour of these snails, I believe the article needs clarification: do the snails adapt to diurnal, semidiurnal or mixed tidal regimes; do the authors/researchers on these snails mean 'low-high' and 'high-high' instead of just 'low' and 'high'? I am glad to see such an interesting puzzle presented here, I would just like the puzzle to be presented more clearly. Thank you. Pinkpedaller (talk) 05:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pinkpedaller (talk • contribs) 05:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, it seems like the fact that English is not my native language played a part in this confusion. "Low tide" is a period when the water recedes, right? In this case, the tidal regime in this area is semidiurnal. I will fix the text. — Yerpo ^Eh? 07:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The revised article is much clearer about this, thank you! I wonder if these snails will someday teach us how to design neuro-molecular gravity wave detectors! Pinkpedaller (talk) 02:13, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I still suspect something more banal is behind all this, such as surface vibrations due to increased water flow through the root system. — Yerpo ^Eh? 13:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)