Occurrence of soft bottom macrofauna along the depth gradient in High Arctic, 79 ° N

From 19 samples covering 1.9 m2, 4295 individuals of 194 macrofauna species have been sorted. Density decreased markedly from over 6000 ind/m2 in shelf stations to some 600 ind/m2 below 1500 m depth. Only two taxa (Chaetozone group and Lumbrineris sp. A) occurred in more than 75 % of samples, 55 tax...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jan Marcin Węsławski, Joanna Legeżyńska
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.533.2623
http://www.polish.polar.pan.pl/ppr24/ppr24-073.pdf
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Summary:From 19 samples covering 1.9 m2, 4295 individuals of 194 macrofauna species have been sorted. Density decreased markedly from over 6000 ind/m2 in shelf stations to some 600 ind/m2 below 1500 m depth. Only two taxa (Chaetozone group and Lumbrineris sp. A) occurred in more than 75 % of samples, 55 taxa (28 % of the total) were represented by single specimens only. The highest number of species per sample (65 taxa in 0.1 m2) was noted at 525 depth. There were 14 eurybathic species and the same number of taxa were found exclusively below 2000 m depth, while 117 species were found only shallower than 300 m depth.