Macrobenthic molluscs from a marine - lagoonal environmental transition in Lesvos Island (Greece)

Athanasios Evagelopoulos,Nikolaos Katsiaras,Vasilis Gerovasileiou,Drosos Koutsoubas

doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e9541

Abstract

BackgroundThis paper describes an occurence dataset, also including numerical abundance and biomass data, pertaining to the macrobenthic molluscan assemblages from a marine - lagoonal environmental transition. The study system was the soft-substrate benthoscape of the area of the Kalloni solar saltworks (Lesvos Island, Greece). Specifically, the study area extended from the infralittoral zone of the inner Kalloni Gulf (marine habitat) to the bottoms of the first two evaporation ponds of the Kalloni solar saltworks (lagoonal habitat). Bottom sediment samples (3 replicates) were collected with a Van Veen grab sampler (0.1 m2) at four sampling sites, along a 1.5 km long line transect that spanned the marine - lagoonal environmental transition. A total of four surveys were carried out seasonally in 2004. A total of 39,345 molluscan individuals were sorted out of the sediment samples and were identified to 71 species, belonging to the Gastropoda (36), Bivalvia (34) and Scaphopoda (1) classes. Numerical abundance and wet biomass (with shells) data are included in the dataset.New informationThe dataset described in the present paper partially fills a significant gap in the scientific literature: Because ecological research of coastal lagoons has seldom explicitly considered the marine - lagoonal habitats interface, there are no openly accessible datasets pertaining to the particular structural component of the transitional waters benthoscapes of the Mediterranean Sea. Such datasets could prove valuable in the research of the structure and functioning of transitional waters benthoscapes. The present dataset is available as a supplementary file (Suppl. material 1) and can also be accessed at http://ipt.medobis.eu/resource?r=kalloni_saltworks_phd.

Highlights

Transitional waters may be considered as "ecotone ecosystems" that structurally and functionally link marine, continental and freshwater ecosystems along the coastline (Levin et al 2001, Basset et al 2012)
Molluscs are an important component of the macrobenthic fauna of coastal lagoons (Barnes 1994)
Their abundance and diversity are important in the lower salinity ponds of solar saltworks (e.g. Britton and Johnson 1987, Evagelopoulos et al 2008, Pavlova et al 1998, Vieira and Amat 1996), where the habitat is considered to be essentially lagoonal

Summary

Background

This paper describes an occurence dataset, including numerical abundance and biomass data, pertaining to the macrobenthic molluscan assemblages from a marine - lagoonal environmental transition. The study system was the soft-substrate benthoscape of the area of the Kalloni solar saltworks (Lesvos Island, Greece). The study area extended from the infralittoral zone of the inner Kalloni Gulf (marine habitat) to the bottoms of the first two evaporation ponds of the Kalloni solar saltworks (lagoonal habitat). Bottom sediment samples (3 replicates) were collected with a Van Veen grab sampler (0.1 m2) at four sampling sites, along a 1.5 km long line transect that spanned the marine - lagoonal environmental transition. Numerical abundance and wet biomass (with shells) data are included in the dataset. Environmental stress gradient, confinement gradient, transitional waters, coastal lagoons, solar saltworks

Introduction

Sampling methods