Investigating the environmental drivers of deep-seafloor biodiversity: A case study of peracarid crustacean assemblages in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

ABSTRACT: The deep-sea benthos covers over 90% of seafloor area and hosts a great diversity of species which contribute toward essential ecosystem services. Evidence suggests that deep-seafloor assemblages are structured predominantly by their physical environment, yet knowledge of assemblage/environment relationships is limited. Here, we utilized a very large dataset of Northwest Atlantic Ocean continental slope peracarid crustacean assemblages as a case study to investigate the environmental drivers of deep-seafloor macrofaunal biodiversity. We investigated biodiversity from a phylogenetic, functional, and taxonomic perspective, and found that a wide variety of environmental drivers, including food availability, physical disturbance (bottom trawling), current speed, sediment characteristics, topog

SUBMITTER: Ashford OS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6953587 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature