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New field methodological approaches for the study of benthic boundary layer (BBL) biodiversity

New field methodological approaches for the study of benthic boundary layer (BBL) biodiversity P. Koulouri, C. Arvanitidis, D. Koutsoubas, C. Dounas & A. Eleftheriou Institute of Marine Biology & Genetics (IMBG, www.marbigen.org ) Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR, www.hcmr.gr)

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New field methodological approaches for the study of benthic boundary layer (BBL) biodiversity

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  1. New field methodological approaches for the study of benthic boundary layer (BBL) biodiversity P. Koulouri, C. Arvanitidis, D. Koutsoubas, C. Dounas & A. Eleftheriou Institute of Marine Biology & Genetics (IMBG, www.marbigen.org) Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR, www.hcmr.gr) E-mail: yol72@her.hcmr.gr

  2. “Over the last decade... many facets of benthic research have been accompanied by significant technological research in acoustic techniques, deep-sea technology, diving techniques….. Yet in contrast, … a slowdown in technological progress on macrofauna techniques and … a scarcity of ideas in technical and methodological issues, with research relying on established methods. One can hardly come to the conclusion that the existing methodology concerning sampling of an extremely complex environment has reached any degree of perfection….” A. Eleftheriou & A. D. McIntyre (eds), 2005. Methods for the study of Marine Benthos. 3rd Edition.

  3. BIODIVERSITY OF BENTHIC BOUNDARY LAYER (BBL) MACROFAUNA Water column  BBL species constitute an important link in marine food webs as consumers of detritus particles and associate microbes, meiobenthos and plankton and as prey for demersal fish, epibenthic crustaceans and cephalopods. zooplankton Benthic Boundary Layer Hyperbenthic sledges have been used over the last 30 years, but there are still practical difficulties to sample efficiently at the sediment-water interface, thus underestimating BBL biodiversity. hyper-benthos Sediment-water interface epi-benthos infauna

  4. Development of innovative methodologies in order to investigate the effects of bottom trawling on benthic nutrient fluxes , sediment biogeochemistry and BBLmacrofauna (DG. XIV, Studies for the support of CFP) TOWED TRAWL SIMULATOR SLEDGE (TTSS1) Dounas et al., 2007. Continental Shelf Research, 27: 2198-2210. Dounas C., 2006. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology & Ecology, 339: 251-259. Dounas et al., 2004. American Fisheries Society Symposium, 41: 539-544. Benthic sledge of Shand & Priestley (1999)

  5. TOWED TRAWL SIMULATOR SLEDGE (TTSS2) Koulouri et al., 2009. Journal of Plankton Research, 31 (7): 753-762. Koulouri et al., 2004. American Fisheries Society Symposium, 41: 529-537. Koulouri et al., 2003. Journal of Marine Biological Association U.K., 83: 1363-1368. TTSS2 is designed to artificially resuspend the surface sediment and sample at the same time, in addition to the BBL species collected by the typical hyperbenthic sledges, the macrofaunal organisms residing on or just above the sediment-water interface.

  6. HYPERBENTHIC SLEDGE (HS)

  7. Some more . . .technical details . . .

  8. 1st experiment USNL box corer (16, S=0.1 m2) Application of the TTSS2 and traditional benthic, hyperbenthic & planktonic samplers in the continental shelf of the Cretan Sea Tselepides et al., 2000 Smith-McIntyre grab (10, S=0.1 m2) TTSS2 (28, S=29 m2) Hyperbentic Sledge (17, S=290 m2) WP2 plankton net (16, S=13 m3)

  9. Non-parametric Multi-Dimensional Scaling ordination plot (MDS) based on density matrices of the taxa collected by the five different samplers Species richness (S) ES (100) Stress: 0.02 ANOSIM test: R=0.99, p<0.001 species exclusively present in the sampler

  10. Dominant species collected by the TTSS2 and the benthic samplers USNL box corer TTSS2 % = relative density Smith-McIntyre grab * species exclusively present in the sampler

  11. 2nd experiment Bathymetric distribution of BBL macrofauna in the continental shelf and upper slope of the Cretan Sea HS TTSS2 Almost ALL of the macrofaunal species living in the BBL were found to reside at the sediment-water interface.

  12. Species richness (S) Macrofaunal groups ES (100) HS, S=290 m2 TTSS2, S=29-116 m2

  13. Dominant species residing at the sediment-water interface 50 m 100 m 200 m 300 m % = relative density

  14. 3rd experiment Diet of demersal and bentho-pelagic fish and BBL macrofaunal diversity in the continental shelf of the Cretan Sea infauna epibenthos hyperbenthos zooplankton

  15. Conclusions . . .  The application of special hyperbenthic sledges modified to resuspend the surface sediment, such as TTSS2, seems to be more suitable than typical hyperbenthic sledges for studying BBL macrofaunal diversity at least in oligotrophic shelf and upper slope areas. BBL biodiversity comprises a mixture of taxa with different ecological habits and distribution patterns near the bottom and therefore complementary information derived from both traditional and novel sampling techniques is essential.  Further development and application of TTSS2 in other continental shelf and slope areas could be an effective tool in order to describe trophic interactions within the BBL habitat.

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