Ecology of molluscan grazers and their interactions with marine algae in north‐eastern new zealand: A review

Molluscan grazers are known to exert an important influence on the overall structure of benthic marine communities. Published information on grazers in these communities inNew Zealand is currently insufficient to propose any general models for the nature or role of herbivore‐algal interactionsin this country. However, a considerable amount of unpublished material exists for intertidal and shallow subtidal rocky reefs innorth‐eastern New Zealand. Much of the information is from unpublished theses, and this review summarises this material and discusses it in the light of published accounts from the northeastern coast (especially the areas around Leigh, Northland), andstudies from elsewhere within arid outside New Zealand. While some reasonably well‐supported models for subtidal grazers can now be formulated, the intertidal material is still too diffuse to allow meaningfulmodels to be proposed. Suggestions are madeas to the type of additional data that is required to complement and augment the material that already exists.