Diversity and community structure of harpacticoid copepodsassociated with cold-water coral substrates in the Porcupine Seabight (North-East Atlantic)

Adapted from: Hendrik Gheerardyn et al. (2010)

Presented by:Fiddy Semba prasetiya

Lay out of the presentation

Introduction

Objectives

Methods

Results & Discussions

Conclussions

Introduction

Coral reeef as one of important coastal resources

High bio-diversity within the dead and mixed live and dead coral (Freiwald 2002)

Association between metazoan meiofauna and nematofauna , and L. pertusa

Harpacticoid copepods in deep-sea meiobenthos?

Lophelia pertusa

Aphrocallistes

Objective and Hypothesis

To investigate the associated harpacticoids copepods on the L. pertusa reef degradation zones

Is the total species (γ) diversity is higher in the coral degradation zone than in the surrounding soft-bottom deep sea?Total diversity (γ), can be partitioned into:

Average diversity within samples (α) Average diversity among samples (β)

β -diversity is subdivided into: Diversity due to differences in microhabitat (β1) Diversity due to differences in sampling site (β2)

Study area & Sampling procedure

Methods

Results

Harpacticoida made up the bulk of the specimens (>90%)Other copepods are: Calanoida, Misophrioida,

Siphonostomatoida & Cyclopoida

Total number of Copepoda Harpacticoida, harpacticoid adults, number species in each sample

Results860 adult harpacticoids, yielded:

157 species, 62 genera & 19 families No significance difference in

relative abundance among coral & sediment samples (ANOVA, p<0.05)

Pseudotachidiidae were higher on sponge skeletons

Ectinosomatidae were dominant in sediment & coral samples

Pseudomesochra, Halophytophilus, Sigmatidium (also Ameira and Pseudobradya) (5-10%) (cor. & sed.)

Pseudomesochra and Ameira (31 & 12%) (spo.)

Results

Defined community structure (coral & sediment samples)ANOSIM was only significant

for sediment-coral (p=0.004, R=0.231)

High average dissimilarity infauna & epifauna (82.1%)

But low similarity within epifauna samples (36.9%) & sediment (10.2%)

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) two-dimensional ordination plot

Results

Sediment had the highest diversity (rarefaction curve)

Dominance in sponge samples was higher than in coral and sediment samples

Total species richness attributed to differences between sampling sites (β2=63.4%)

Discussion

Multiple corer VS boxcorerNo defined microhabitat for harpacticoid assemblages at

family level:

Difficulties in assessing total harpacticoid species diversity

Taxa Microhabitat typeSediment Coral Sponge

Pseudotachidiidae +Pseudomesochra +Tetragonicipitidae +Ameira + +Pseudobradya + +Halophytophilus lopheliae +

Conclussion

• Trends in species composition and diversity of harpacticoids in the coral degradation zone were difficult to asses

• Harpacticoid composition and diversity are not different between microhabitat

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