Polar Biol DOI 10.1007/s00300-007-0263-5ORIGINAL PAPER Soft bottom species richness and diversity as a function of depth and iceberg scour in Arctic glacial Kongsfjorden (Svalbard)

• Main Authors: Jürgen Laudien, Marko Herrmann, Wolf E. Arntz
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Sion; Svalbard; Iceberg*; Kongsfjord*; Kongsfjorden
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.463.5572; http://epic.awi.de/14904/1/Lau2006a.pdf

Abstract Macrozoobenthic soft-sediment communities of central Arctic Kongsfjorden inhabiting six depth zones between 5 and 30 m were sampled using SCUBA-diving during June–August 2003 and analysed comparatively. About 63 taxa were found, nine of which had not been reported for Kongsfjorden and four for Svalbard. Suspen-sion feeding or surface and sub-surface detritivorous poly-chaetes and deposit-feeding amphipods were dominant. Only 11 of the 63 taxa (45 species and additional 18 fami-lies not further identiWed) inhabited the complete depth range. Biomass ranged from 3.5 to 25.0 g ash free dry mass m¡2 and mean Shannon diversity (Log e) was 2.06. Similarity clustering from abundance and biomass data showed a signiWcant diVerence between the shallow station (5 m) and the rest. The latter formed two sub-groups (10– 20 and 25–30 m). Depth is irrevocably correlated with ice-scouring. Thus the diVerences in diversity together with the predicted iceberg scour intensity support the ‘intermediate disturbance hypothesis ’ indicating that habitats impacted by moderate iceberg scouring enable higher diversity. In contrast, biotopes frequently aVected only host pioneer communities, while mature, less diverse assemblages domi-nate depths of low impact.