Comparing productionbiomass ratios of benthos and suprabenthos in macrofaunal marine crustaceans

Abstract

Using available data from the literature, we compared the production–biomass ratios (P/B) between the suprabenthic (= hyperbenthic) and the benthic (infauna–epifauna) species within the group of the macrofaunal marine crustaceans. This data set consists of 91 P/B estimates (26 for suprabenthos and 65 for infauna–epifauna) for 49 different species. Suprabenthic crustacean P/B was significantly higher than P/B of benthic crustacean (post-hoc Scheffé test; one-way analysis of covariance, ANCOVA; p < 10 –3 ) and also of other (noncrustacean) benthic invertebrate (p < 10 –4 ). Predictive multilinear regression (MLR) analysis for macrofaunal marine crustaceans showed P/B to depend significantly on mean annual temperature (T) and mean individual weight (W) (R 2 = 0.367). Adding the variable swimming capacity increased goodness-of-fit to R 2 = 0.528. The higher P/B of suprabenthic (= swimming) macrofauna in comparison with that of the benthic compartment seems to be related to the most apparent feature of the suprabenthos, its swimming capacity. The high P/Bs reported for suprabenthic species indicate how a nontrivial part of benthic production can be ignored if suprabenthos is not well sampled, therefore biasing the models of energy flow generated for trophic webs.