Length-mass relationships for transitional water benthic macroinvertebrates in Mediterranean and Black Sea ecosystems
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- 作者：I. Rosati ; ilaria.rosati@unisalento.it ; E. Barbone ; A. Basset
- 关键词：length&ndash ; mass relationships ; benthic macroinvertebrates ; biomass estimate ; Mediterranean Sea ; Black Sea ; transitional waters
- 刊名：Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science
- 出版年：2012
- 出版时间：10 November, 2012
- 年：2012
- 卷：113
- 期：Complete
- 页码：231-239
- 全文大小：685 K
文摘
Length-mass relationships are potentially useful tools to estimate individual biomass, assuming a relative invariance within and among populations and, sometimes, among species pertaining to a same family or order. Here, we present a field test of these assumptions in guilds of benthic macroinvertebrates colonising transitional water ecosystems. To this aim, we are analysing length-mass relationships of benthic macroinvertebrates of transitional water ecosystems and assessing their variability among populations of a same species and among species of a same family and/or order. Data are from synoptic studies carried out at four oligohaline transitional water ecosystems, from the Southern Italy and the Danube delta ecoregions; they refer to 40 macroinvertebrate taxa selected from the overall species pool according to absolute and relative density requirements. Species composition differed widely among ecoregions while length-mass relationships of the species occurring in both ecoregions did not; the variability of length-mass parameters of these species among ecosystems was lower than 10 % . Length-mass regressions were relatively conservative also with respect to taxonomic resolution; significant differences were observed among species within 5 out of the 7 orders tested but differences in slopes and intercepts were on average lower than 15 % . Therefore, our results, representing one of the first efforts to catalogue length-mass relationships for benthic macroinvertebrates in transitional waters, support the assumption of relative invariance of length-mass relationships and their use in studies where gross estimates of population biomasses are required.