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3 Biology of Fronts
Plume fronts (usually having small-scale and being highly mobile), also may
act concentrating and transporting planktonic larvae. Buoyant plumes may propagate onshore during flood tide transporting high concentrations of planktonic larvae at frontal boundaries. Some estuarine fronts could act as a “larval conduit”
by funneling larvae collected at the front to settlement locations. Since fronts
constrain crossfrontal flow they serve to deflect incident flow, resulting in strong
along-frontal flows which transport larvae collected at the front. These larvae
are likely to settle where the front intersects the shore. If the front is anchored
by a topographic feature then this intersection will be a single stationary point,
and probably a site at which the adult population is concentrated (Largier 1993;
Eggleston et al. 1998).
3 Biology of Fronts
Plume fronts (usually having small-scale and being highly mobile), also may
act concentrating and transporting planktonic larvae. Buoyant plumes may propagate onshore during flood tide transporting high concentrations of planktonic larvae at frontal boundaries. Some estuarine fronts could act as a “larval conduit”
by funneling larvae collected at the front to settlement locations. Since fronts
constrain crossfrontal flow they serve to deflect incident flow, resulting in strong
along-frontal flows which transport larvae collected at the front. These larvae
are likely to settle where the front intersects the shore. If the front is anchored
by a topographic feature then this intersection will be a single stationary point,
and probably a site at which the adult population is concentrated (Largier 1993;
Eggleston et al. 1998).