Infaunal benthic communities from the inner shelf off southwestern Africa are characterised by generalist species
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Date
2015
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Public Library Science
Abstract
Infaunal communities of benthic macro-organisms ( 1mm length) were studied from 81
samples collected across nine sites to the north and south of the Orange River in the Benguela upwelling ecosystem in 2003, with a view to describing communities and understanding the drivers of regional community structure, as well as to document diversity and to
examine geographic affinities. Although the fauna was dominated by polychaetes and peracarid crustaceans, patterns in community structure could only weakly be explained by the
measured environment (~35%). This is attributed to the generalist nature of the species
recovered, which were widely distributed amongst different sediments, water-depths and
latitudes. The fauna is dominated by species that enjoy a widespread regional and global
distribution and is characterised by relatively low diversity, which is discussed.
Description
Keywords
Biodiversity, Conservation, Africa, Fishing
Citation
Steffani, N. et al. (2015). Infaunal benthic communities from the inner shelf off southwestern Africa are characterised by generalist species. PLoS ONE, 10 (11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143637