Soft-bottom macrozoobenthos of the southern part of the Gulf of Trieste: faunistic, biocoenotic and ecological survey

A faunistic, biocoenotic and ecological survey of soft-bottom macrozoobenthic communities was carried out for the southern part of the Gulf of Trieste on the basis of samplings in 2005 and 2006. At 28 sampled stations a total of 14595 specimens belonging to 306 animal taxa were identified. The most abundant species were capitella capitata, lumbrineris gracilis, Heteromastus filiformis, corbula gibba and tellina distorta. The highest relative species abundance in all water bodies was close to 15%. The dominant species confirmed that the environment of the Gulf of Trieste is unstable. This environmental instability could also explain the rather high values of AMBI. The MDS analysis and other applied indices indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between water bodies. The values for Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H’) and Pielou’s index (J’) were among the highest ever recorded for the soft-bottom assemblages of the Gulf of Trieste. The analysis of benthic biocoenoses revealed that the sampling area is a boundary between infraand circalittoral belts, which could explain the very high species richness.