Abstract
This paper is a brief review of successional stages and activity of benthic soft-bottom communities. Benthic communities was first described by Petersen in the 1910s and further developed by Molander, Thorson and Margalef. Successional stages of benthic communities chance in a predictable way in relation to environmental disturbance and food availability. Food supply to the bottom can occur as a vertical flux, but transport through lateral advection is more important in some areas. While at the bottom, the infauna processes the food in many different ways, and the feeding modes can be categorised into more than 20 functional groups, but fewer are present in brackish water. This categorisation is based on animal mobility and where and how they ingest the food. Animal activity in the sediment, bioturbation, has a significant effect on redox conditions and diagenetic processes. Structures in the sediment due to infaunal presence and activity can be observed in situ by sediment profile imaging, and the biogenic structures and redox conditions can be parameterised and have been shown to correlate to benthic community successional stages. The largest threat to benthic faunal biodiversity is the spread of near-bottom oxygen deficiency in many enclosed are stratified coastal areas.
Highlights
Pioneer in marine benthic ecology was the Danish scientist C.G.J
FIG. 3. – General model of benthic-pelagic coupling from the Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean Sea showing the sedimentation of organic matter under different trophic conditions and the importance of a pycnocline
In addition to the feeding and mobility modes described above, they used 3 degrees of mobility and 4 modes of feeding habit. They graphically showed (Fig. 5) the habitat related depth distribution of these functional groups, where herbivores and suspension feeders had their main distribution in shallow waters, deposit feeders were to be more abundant on accumulation bottoms and carnivores were found in all habitats
Summary
Successional stages of benthic communities chance in a predictable way in relation to environmental disturbance and food availability. The infauna processes the food in many different ways, and the feeding modes can be categorised into more than 20 functional groups, but fewer are present in brackish water. This categorisation is based on animal mobility and where and how they ingest the food. Structures in the sediment due to infaunal presence and activity can be observed in situ by sediment profile imaging, and the biogenic structures and redox conditions can be parameterised and have been shown to correlate to benthic community successional stages.
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