A survey of the polychaetes of Bolivar Flats and Big Reef, Galveston, Texas.

Intertidal flats serve many important ecological functions. They are feeding areas for birds and fish and act as energy transfer points in estuarine systems. Bolivar Flats and Big Reef are important upper Texas coast intertidal areas with heavy shorebird (Lane and Tveten, 1974; Pettingill, 1981) and fish use, but there are no previous investigations of the infaunal populations. This study was conducted to identify and quantify the polychaete infauna of these two flats.