Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope
Diversity and community patterns of macro- and megafauna were compared on the Canadian Beaufort shelf and slope. Faunal sampling collected 247 taxa from 48 stations with box core and trawl gear over the summers of 2009–2011 between 50 and 1,000 m in depth. Of the 80 macrofaunal and 167 megafaunal ta...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4090152 2023-05-15T18:18:38+02:00 Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope Nephin, Jessica Juniper, S. Kim Archambault, Philippe 2014-07-09 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090152 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007347 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007347 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 2014-07-20T00:48:47Z Diversity and community patterns of macro- and megafauna were compared on the Canadian Beaufort shelf and slope. Faunal sampling collected 247 taxa from 48 stations with box core and trawl gear over the summers of 2009–2011 between 50 and 1,000 m in depth. Of the 80 macrofaunal and 167 megafaunal taxa, 23% were uniques, present at only one station. Rare taxa were found to increase proportional to total taxa richness and differ between the shelf ( 100 m) where they tended to be sparse and the slope where they were relatively abundant. The macrofauna principally comprised polychaetes with nephtyid polychaetes dominant on the shelf and maldanid polychaetes (up to 92% in relative abundance/station) dominant on the slope. The megafauna principally comprised echinoderms with Ophiocten sp. (up to 90% in relative abundance/station) dominant on the shelf and Ophiopleura sp. dominant on the slope. Macro- and megafauna had divergent patterns of abundance, taxa richness ( diversity) and diversity. A greater degree of macrofaunal than megafaunal variation in abundance, richness and diversity was explained by confounding factors: location (east-west), sampling year and the timing of sampling with respect to sea-ice conditions. Change in megafaunal abundance, richness and diversity was greatest across the depth gradient, with total abundance and richness elevated on the shelf compared to the slope. We conclude that megafaunal slope taxa were differentiated from shelf taxa, as faunal replacement not nestedness appears to be the main driver of megafaunal diversity across the depth gradient. Text Sea ice PubMed Central (PMC) Beaufort Shelf ENVELOPE(-142.500,-142.500,70.000,70.000) PLoS ONE 9 7 e101556 |
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Research Article Nephin, Jessica Juniper, S. Kim Archambault, Philippe Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
Diversity and community patterns of macro- and megafauna were compared on the Canadian Beaufort shelf and slope. Faunal sampling collected 247 taxa from 48 stations with box core and trawl gear over the summers of 2009–2011 between 50 and 1,000 m in depth. Of the 80 macrofaunal and 167 megafaunal taxa, 23% were uniques, present at only one station. Rare taxa were found to increase proportional to total taxa richness and differ between the shelf ( 100 m) where they tended to be sparse and the slope where they were relatively abundant. The macrofauna principally comprised polychaetes with nephtyid polychaetes dominant on the shelf and maldanid polychaetes (up to 92% in relative abundance/station) dominant on the slope. The megafauna principally comprised echinoderms with Ophiocten sp. (up to 90% in relative abundance/station) dominant on the shelf and Ophiopleura sp. dominant on the slope. Macro- and megafauna had divergent patterns of abundance, taxa richness ( diversity) and diversity. A greater degree of macrofaunal than megafaunal variation in abundance, richness and diversity was explained by confounding factors: location (east-west), sampling year and the timing of sampling with respect to sea-ice conditions. Change in megafaunal abundance, richness and diversity was greatest across the depth gradient, with total abundance and richness elevated on the shelf compared to the slope. We conclude that megafaunal slope taxa were differentiated from shelf taxa, as faunal replacement not nestedness appears to be the main driver of megafaunal diversity across the depth gradient. |
format |
Text |
author |
Nephin, Jessica Juniper, S. Kim Archambault, Philippe |
author_facet |
Nephin, Jessica Juniper, S. Kim Archambault, Philippe |
author_sort |
Nephin, Jessica |
title |
Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
title_short |
Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
title_full |
Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
title_fullStr |
Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
title_full_unstemmed |
Diversity, Abundance and Community Structure of Benthic Macro- and Megafauna on the Beaufort Shelf and Slope |
title_sort |
diversity, abundance and community structure of benthic macro- and megafauna on the beaufort shelf and slope |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090152 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007347 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-142.500,-142.500,70.000,70.000) |
geographic |
Beaufort Shelf |
geographic_facet |
Beaufort Shelf |
genre |
Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Sea ice |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007347 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101556 |
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PLoS ONE |
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9 |
container_issue |
7 |
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e101556 |
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1766195281585504256 |