Intermittent study of benthic fauna in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria, Egypt. | ||
| Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries | ||
| Article 15, Volume 22, Issue 4, September 2018, Pages 209-223 PDF (427.13 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejabf.2018.17099 | ||
| Authors | ||
| Rasha Hamdy; Mohamed Dorgham | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The hard bottom benthic fauna at a fixed site in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria, Egypt was studied during intermittent seasons from 2014 to 2018. The results recorded 26 species, belong mainly to polychaetes (11 species) and crustaceans (9 species), in addition to 2 species of mollusks and one species for each of Cnidaria, Porifera, Bryozoa and Sipuncula. The species richness varied between 9 species after the winter storm of 2014 to 21 species in spring 2015, while the numerical abundance of the total fauna fluctuated between 1007 ind./m2 in spring 2017 and 3442.3 ind./m2 before the winter storm of 2014. The Shannon diversity index was low (0.98 - 1.51), associated with low evenness (0.39 -0.69). Polychaetes constituted 45.2% of the total faunal count, followed by crustaceans (35.2%), and mollusks (19.4%). Five species only appeared to be responsible for 91.7% of the total count, namely the polychaetes Pseudonereis anomala Gravier (1899) and Spirobranchus triqueter Linnaeus (1758), the amphipod Elasmopus pectenicrus Spence Bate (1862), the isopod Cirolana bovina Barnard (1940), and the bivalve Brachidontes pharaonis P. Fischer (1870). Other species sustained relatively high counts, forming high percent of the total population at certain time, such as the polychaetes Syllis schulzi Hartmann-Schröder (1960), Loimia medusa Savigny (1822), the isopod Dynamene bidentata Adams (1800), and the gastropod Fissurella sp. The counts and relative abundance of the major groups as well as the dominant species experienced pronounced temporal variation throughout the period of study. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Polychaetes; Crustaceans; coastal fauna; Alexandria coast; Eastern Harbour | ||
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