Figure 1.
Study site: Cape Rose Flats, Shark Bay, Western Australia.
The inset shows the location of the Cape Rose Flats within Shark Bay. The study site was divided into six transects representing nearshore (black), sand (grey), and patchy (white) microhabitats. Black circles represent the location of temperature data loggers.
Figure 2.
Bubble chart of giant shovelnose ray (Glaucostegus typus) (A) and whipray (Himantura uarnak and H. fai) (B) densities with tidal height, water temperature, and microhabitat. Bubble widths are relative to the maximum density observed for each species group (giant shovelnose ray: 22.67 rays ha−1, whipray: 4.67 rays ha−1). Dots represent transects in which no rays were observed.
Table 1.
Matrix of predicted probabilities of giant shovelnose ray (Glaucostegus typus) occurrence per microhabitat for selected temperatures and tidal heights.
Table 2.
Matrix of predicted probabilities of whipray (Himantura uarnak and H. fai) occurrence per microhabitat for selected temperatures and tidal heights.
Table 3.
Percentage (sample size) of resting giant shovelnose ray (Glaucostegus typus), reticulate whipray (Himantura uarnak), and pink whipray (H. fai) for each season and microhabitat.
Figure 3.
Seasonal temperatures (mean±standard error) per microhabitat for the time period between 23 April 2007 and 14 October 2007. Bars with different letters are significantly different at P<0.01.
Figure 4.
Microhabitat temperature differences.
Histogram of temperature differences between nearshore and midflats (A) and nearshore and offshore (B) areas of Cape Rose Flats between 23 April 2007 and 14 October 2007. Negative temperature differences indicate nearshore areas were cooler and positive values indicate nearshore areas were warmer. All recorded temperature values were used for the construction of the histograms.