Soft-bottom exploration of assemblage patterns of the Red Sea amphipods at multiple spatial and vertical scales

Abstract

We described here the assemblage patterns accompanying the soft-bottom amphipods on both spatial and vertical scales. During winter 2020, 6820 individuals were collected from Hurghada and Shalateen, the Red Sea coast from five different depths ranging from 0.5 to 35 m. Twenty two amphipod species were recorded of which 18 (82 %) and 9 (41%) species were from Hurghada and Shalateen, respectively. Perioculodes aequimanus was the most abundant sand amphipod amounting to 17% and 39% in Hurghada and Shalateen, respectively, followed byCeradocus rubromaculatus (27%) in Shalateen, and Metaphoxus sp. and Bemlos sp. (15%) in Hurghada. Depth influenced the total amphipod abundance in Hurghada, while, in Shalateen it showed an opposite assemblage pattern. The multivariate approach based on Non-Metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) was helpful to detect differences between the study sites against depths.Sandy bottom composition, temperature, and depth variations were the main factors that influenced the amphipod assemblages according to the PCA and ANOSIM outputs. The SIMPER analysis showed that the amphipod Lysianassa ceratina and Lembos sp. were the most contributing species to the dissimilarity between the two study sites, whileGuernea petalocera was the most contributing species to the similarity between Hurghada and Shalateen.