Gastropod Community in the Mangrove Area of the Mesjid Lama Village, Talawi Sub-district, Batubara Regency, Sumatera Utara Province

Abstract

Gastropods commonly inhabit mangrove area and it is predicted that there is a relationship between mangrove and gastropod communities. In the Mesjid Lama Village, part of mangrove area has been used for housing and tourism area. As any changing in the mangrove may affects the gastropod communities, a study aims to understand the community of gastropods in the mangrove area has been conducted in December 2012. There were 3 stations namely in the area where most of mangrove has been cut (St 1), in the tourism destination where several mangrove has been cut (St 2) and in the good mangrove forest (St 3). Parameters measured were abundance, diversity index (H'), dominance index (C) and equitability index (E). Results shown that there were 5 families, consisted of Potamididae (3 species), Ellobiidae (2 species), Littorinidae (1 species), Neritidae (1 species) and Assimineidae (1 species). Results shown that gastropod community is related strongly to mangrove density. In the St 3, the density of mangrove (1.722 tree/ha) as well as that of the gastropod (208.889 organisms/ha) are the highest. In contrast, in the St I, the mangrove and the gastropod densities are the lowest (444 tree/ha and 38.889 organisms/ha respectively). Water quality parameters in all stations are almost the same, water pH is 8 and that of the soil is 7.63 – 7.75. Water temperature, however is slightly different, as the St1 (31oC) is hotter than those of the other stations (30,7 oC in St 1 and 29,7 oC in St3).