Keywords
community structure
macroinfauna
continental structure
How to Cite
Abstract
During february 2006, in the ship cruise 0206 AMPs (Marine Protected Regions), we took samples of soft bottom from the continental shelf of Palomino and Guajira eco-regions. The goal was to describe the structure of the macroinfauna associated to soft bottoms between 28 and 72 m deep and to establish the environmental factors affecting such structure. The faunal composition was represented by 74 families belonging to mollusks (32), polychaetes (28), crustaceans (12), echinoderms (1) and sipunculans (1). The polychaetes were the most abundant, with the 45% of the organisms. The mollusks were the 80% of the biomass. The most abundant families were Nuculanidae (13,1%), Asoidosiohonidae (6,6%), Maldanidae (6,4%), Spionidae (6,2%) and Eunicidae (4,6%). The composition of the bottom was sand of medium and fine grain size and mud with some inputs of CaCO3 litoclastics and litobioclastics. The type of community observed had a structure similar to the macroinfauna described for the Gulf of Salamanca in the Santa Marta region. There was no a strong relation between the biotic structure and the assemblages and the physical variations of the sediment and the depth. In fact, in the current research we show evidence of the weak effect of the sand grain size on the spatial distribution of the macroinfauna of La Guajira.References
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