| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The insects are consisted of more than one million species and their evolutionary success on land is unparalleled among organisms. However, they are not successful in the marine habitat and only five species of genus Halobates are found in the open ocean. Although oceanic Halobates is very interesting from evolutionary and ecological point of view, little is known about their ecology due to the difficulties of survey in the ocean. The aim of this research is to clarify the ecology of oceanic Halobates by the population survey off Japanese coast. The obtained results are as follows.
We conducted quantitative samplings of Halobates during the following cruises : R/V Seisui Maru of Mie University, 99-09 cruise from the Kumano-nada Sea to the East China Sea in July, 1999 ; R/V Tansei Maru of Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, KT00-08 cruise off Shikoku and Kyushu Islands in June, 2000 ; R/V Tansei Maru of Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, KT01-07 cruise in the East China Sea in June, 2001 ; R/V Hakuho Maru of Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, KH02-01 cruise in the East China Sea in May, 2001 ; R/V Tansei Maru of Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, KT02-13 cruise in September, 2002. The first quantitative study of Halobates off Japanese coast has been carried out during these cruises. Three species were collected in the area : H. micans, H. germanus, and H. sericeus with two different species co-occurring in comparable densities in different years. Co-occurrence of Halobates with comparable densities has never been reported in other regions of the ocean. The species composition changed temporally. We discussed distributions of the three Halobates species with special reference to the influences of the Kuroshio Current, eddies generated by the Kuroshio, temporal variations of sea-surface temperature, and the monsoon.
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