Suprabenthic fauna from the Bellingshausen Sea and western Antarctic Peninsula: spatial distribution and community structure

During the austral summers of 2003 and 2006 suprabenthic assemblages were investigated at 35 stations located in the Bellingshausen Sea and off the western Antarctic Peninsula at depths ranging from 45 to 3280 m. Suprabenthos was collected with a Maccer-GIROQ sledge equipped with an automatic opening and closing system. The highest dissimilarity values in the segregation of the pairwise station groupd were obtained for Mysidae, Lysianassidae, Gammaridea, Cumacca and Munnopsidae. The recorded faunistic patterns showed dependences in the environmental variables depth and percentage of mud in the sediment as single and combined variables.