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Web of life · The Maroochy river country

Pull any thread

One river, two waters. The fresh floodplain and the salt tide meet in the Maroochy's mangroves and mud; follow anything living here, a crab, an eel, a godwit, and it leads you back to the tide.

The Maroochy river country in cross-section A drawn cross-section of the Maroochy river country, fresh water at the left falling seaward to the tide's channel at the right. Paperbark and reed swamp with a wading egret opens the frame; the ground steps down past a swamp oak to a samphire-covered saltmarsh shelf, then drops through the mangrove band, where a grey mangrove stands over its pencil roots with oysters crusted on a snag beside it and fiddler and soldier crabs working the bared flat at its foot. Two dashed lines cross the whole picture, marking the spring tides' reach and the daily high tide; the water's edge lies below them. Under the surface, seagrass and young fish and prawns hold the shallows, and the channel deepens to the right, marked with the tide's arrows, with a broad-clawed mud crab at the bank it lies dug into by day. Along the bottom a dark stratum of estuary mud is cut open, showing a sesarmid crab's burrow stocked with dragged-down leaves and the flats' buried shells and worms. The drawn residents are named beside their drawings, and labelled chips mark where each working group operates. The complete record of who is here, and how they are joined, follows this picture as text. estuary mud, the engine room Sesarmid crabs The mud The tide Mud crab Open water Seagrass meadows Young fish & prawns Seagrass shallows the daily high tide Grey mangrove Sydney rock oyster Fiddler crabs Soldier crabs Mangrove band the spring tides’ reach Saltmarsh samphires Saltmarsh Great egret Swamp oak Paperbark & reed swamp Bar-tailed godwit The air
The Maroochy river country in cross-section A tall drawn cross-section of the Maroochy river country, read top to bottom in the same order a boardwalk descends it: freshest and highest first, then band by band as the tide's reach grows. Under a narrow band of air with a flying godwit in it, paperbark and reed swamp holds a wading egret and a swamp oak on the line where fresh hands over to salt. Below a dashed line marking the spring tides' reach lies the samphire-covered saltmarsh, then the mangrove band under its own dashed high-tide line: a grey mangrove over its pencil roots, oysters on a snag, and fiddler and soldier crabs on the bared flat. The water's edge crosses next, with seagrass and young fish and prawns in the sunlit shallows, then the deeper channel marked with the tide's arrows, a broad-clawed mud crab at its bank. The frame ends in a dark stratum of estuary mud cut open, showing a sesarmid crab's burrow stocked with dragged-down leaves and the flats' buried shells and worms. The drawn residents are named beside their drawings, and labelled chips mark where each working group operates. The complete record of who is here, and how they are joined, follows this picture as text. Bar-tailed godwit The air Great egret Swamp oak Paperbark & reed swamp the spring tides’ reach Saltmarsh samphires Saltmarsh the daily high tide Grey mangrove Sydney rock oyster Fiddler crabs Soldier crabs Mangrove band Seagrass meadows Young fish & prawns Seagrass shallows The tide Mud crab Open water estuary mud, the engine room Sesarmid crabs The mud

63 living things and features. 80 connections between them. Touch one and the rest of the place comes with it.

Or touch anything in the drawing, or meet everyone who lives here.

Everyone who lives here

63 residents and features, in the working groups they belong to. Press any name to put it in the middle of the web.

the mangrove band · 7

The plants that hold the ground down: the grey mangrove owning the middle band, the red mangrove on its stilts at the exposed edge, the river and milky mangroves in the brackish upper reaches, the swamp oak where fresh water hands over to salt, the paperbark above it, and a mistletoe living off the she-oak's plumbing.

the saltmarsh · 3

The band above the mangroves that only the spring tides reach: samphires and salt couch carpeting a flat that looks like nothing and is a dinner table, a nursery for mosquitoes, and a carbon vault.

the paperbark and reed swamp · 3

The plants of the water the tide never reaches: reed and cumbungi standing in thick beds where a poorer floodplain would grow twig-rush, waterlilies paving the open water, and the rank sedge and grass the geese mow.

the mud · 12

The economy in the mud: fungi conditioning the fallen leaf, sesarmid crabs burying it, amphipods shredding it, microbes finishing it, whelks and soldier crabs and fiddlers grazing the film, and worms and burrowing shrimp turning the whole bank over from inside.

the mangrove band · 3

The water-cleaners: the Sydney rock oyster straining litres a day off trunks, pylons and rock, the barnacles crowding every hard surface beside it, and the bivalves buried in the flat breathing the tide through a pair of siphons.

the seagrass shallows · 5

The maternity ward of the fishery: seagrass and root-cover hiding the young fish and prawns, the bass that runs down to spawn where the water turns brackish, and the eels fattening for one journey out.

the open water · 5

The animals of the channel and the water's edge: the mud crab dug into a bank by day, the mudskipper that leaves the water altogether, the sea mullet grazing the mud itself, the bream that rides the tide up over the flat and back, and the plankton the tide delivers to everything waiting.

the paperbark and reed swamp · 6

The hunters of the shallows: the egret, the spoonbill and the jabiru working the filling swamp, the jacana striding the floating leaves, the magpie geese grazing the rank margins, and a small hunched heron holding the mangrove edge as the tide drains.

the air · 2

The birds that commute between the Arctic and these flats: a godwit that can cross the ocean without once landing, and a curlew whose bill is shaped to a crab's burrow.

the paperbark and reed swamp · 4

The voices after warm rain: four frogs, four unmistakable calls, all drawing on the same wetland arithmetic of water to breed in, cover to hide in and insects to eat.

the open water · 2

The introduced mosquitofish in the still water, nipping fins and eating the eggs of frogs and native fish, and the waterborne mould that ulcerates the bream once an acid pulse has stripped their skin.

the air · 6

Everything that hunts this river from above: an osprey that enters the water feet first, a sea-eagle that lifts its catch off the surface and robs the osprey afterwards, two kingfishers working fish and crabs, a swallow on the mosquito swarms, and the dragonflies over the fresh end.

the mangrove band · 4

The ones that live off what the plants make rather than what eats the plants: a honeyeater that hardly leaves the mangroves, a finch on the reed seed, a bird that eats mistletoe and almost nothing else, and a butterfly whose caterpillars beat the milky mangrove's sap.

The tide itself the stage itself · 1

One feature holds this web up and it is neither a plant nor an animal. The tide runs the estuary, and the estuary's muddiest, least-loved ground is where most of the fish caught off this coast grew up, so it stands here as a place to stand like any resident.

Neighbouring stories just past the boundary · 2

These live at the edge of this web, not inside it. They appear because a connection or a signpost reaches them, and they are not drawn in the scene, because the scene holds only this place.

See the complete network all 80 relationships as one abstract graph, with each stroke saying where its evidence comes from
The Maroochy river country web drawn as a connected graph. Every resident and the tide itself is a dot, gathered into its working group, and every documented connection is a line between two dots: the more continuous the line, the stronger the evidence, and the arrow points at the taker. Selecting a dot lights its own connections; every line opens the evidence behind it. The same information follows as text below. decomposition · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology nutrient cycling · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology host plant · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere decomposition · General ecology grazing · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology pollination · General ecology pollination · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere seed dispersal · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology decomposition · General ecology predation · General ecology nutrient cycling · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology parasitism or disease · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere decomposition · Seen elsewhere parasitism or disease · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology decomposition · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere decomposition · General ecology a fungal partnership · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere The broad-leaved paperbark. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The grey mangrove. 6 relationships. Opens its entry. The milky mangrove. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The red mangrove. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The river mangrove. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The she-oak mistletoe. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The swamp oak. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The marine couch. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The saltmarsh mosquitoes. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The saltmarsh samphires. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The reed beds. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The rank sedge and grass. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The waterlilies. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The amphipods. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The burrowing shrimp. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The fiddler crabs. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The leaf-rotting fungi. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The mud's buried life. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The mud's microbes. 5 relationships. Opens its entry. The mud whelks. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The mudflat worms. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The sesarmid crabs. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The soldier crabs. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The swamp's invertebrates. 11 relationships. Opens its entry. The swamp's soil fungi. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The barnacles. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The buried bivalves. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The Sydney rock oyster. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The Australian bass. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The longfin eel. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The seagrass meadows. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The shortfin eel. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The young fish and prawns. 11 relationships. Opens its entry. The mud crab. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The mudskipper. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The plankton. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The sea mullet. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The yellowfin bream. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The black-necked stork. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The comb-crested jacana. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The great egret. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The magpie goose. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The royal spoonbill. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The striated heron. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The bar-tailed godwit. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The eastern curlew. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The bleating tree frog. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The green tree frog. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The pobblebonk. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The striped marsh frog. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The eastern mosquitofish. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The red-spot mould. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The azure kingfisher. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The dragonflies. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The osprey. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The sacred kingfisher. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The welcome swallow. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The white-bellied sea-eagle. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The chestnut-breasted mannikin. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The common crow butterfly. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The mangrove honeyeater. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The mistletoebird. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The tidal estuary. 18 relationships. Opens its entry. The Blue Heart. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The Noosa oyster reef. 2 relationships. Opens its entry.
Swipe sideways to move across the network. Tap a group or resident to simplify it here. Every line is a connection, and its stroke tells you how well it is evidenced. The arrow points at the taker; arrows both ways mark a trade. Select a line to read its evidence, a dot to open its entry. Seen here Seen elsewhere General ecology Our reading a resident a feature of the place a neighbour

About this web

This web holds 80 relationships across 63 residents and features, and every one of them is on the page. It shows the plants, animals and fungi you can expect to find in this country and how they depend on one another. Some of that is drawn from the book's own chapters and some is the ordinary, well-understood ecology of this kind of place; the counts are computed from the shipped records, never typed in.

A honeyeater at a banksia flower and a fungus in the leaf litter belong here because that is how this country runs, whether or not anyone has published the observation on this exact ground. Where a relationship does rest on a particular study or a passage of the book, its card says so and its mark says where that knowledge came from: 8 recorded for these species elsewhere and 72 that are the general ecology of this kind of country. Those marks are about the record, not about the doubt: a fiddler crab sorting the edible film from a mouthful of mud is not a hypothesis, it is simply something nobody has published for this particular river. Every relationship, printed once with its full evidence, quotation and source, is on the evidence register.

Whose country this is

The Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi) people are the Traditional Owners and continuing custodians of this country, and have read it for far longer than any source on this page. This release presents the published scientific record only. Knowledge of Country belongs to its custodians, and it would enter this product only through proper collaboration and cultural protocols, which has not yet happened. That is the scope of this page, stated plainly, not a gap we will quietly fill.

What the marks mean

  • Seen here · Recorded or measured on this river itself.
  • Seen elsewhere · Documented for these species, and not as a record made at this place. The source may well cover this coast; what it does not carry is the observation here. The tier word, not the verb, says where the work was done.
  • General ecology · Established for these species generally, and expected here for that reason. What is missing is the local record: nobody has published the observation made on this river yet.
  • Our reading · Our editorial interpretation, signed as such.

No resident here carries a location, by construction: the records this page is built from have nowhere to put one. The eastern curlew still feeds on this coast's flats, and this page will never say which flat more closely than that.