We compare depth distributions, and β-diversity of holothurians and asteroids collected from the Porcupine Seabight (PSB) and Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) in the eastern North Atlantic. The data represent 160 and 209 epibenthic sledge and semi-balloon otter trawl samples for holothurians and asteroids respectively taken from 1977 to 1998 as part of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Biology Programme in the PSB (Rice et al. 1991) and the BENGAL Program in the PAP (Billett & Rice 2001). The samples include 43 species of holothurians (Billett 1991) and 43 species of asteroids (Howell et al. 2002).
We performed analyses of nested order by applying BINMATNEST (Rodríguez-Gironés & Santamaría 2006. Baselga (2010, 2012) showed that β-diversity, can be decomposed into 2 terms: dissimilarity resulting from turnover (spatial replacement) and dissimilarity attributed to nestedness. We used these measures to examine the differences in composition between 2 sites (pair-wise dissimilarity). To determine the general trend in species composition over all depths, we performed non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) on species presence absence matrices (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index scaling) using the metaMDS function in R.
Baselga A (2010) Partitioning the turnover and nestedness components of β diversity. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 19: 134−143
Baselga A (2012) The relationship between species replacement, dissimilarity derived from nestedness, and nestedness. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 21: 1223−1232
Billett DSM (1991) Deep-sea holothurians. Oceanogr Mar Biol Annu Rev 29: 259−317
Billett DSM, Rice AL (2001) The BENGAL programme: introduction and overview. Prog Oceanogr 50: 13−25
Howell KL, Billett DS, Tyler PA (2002) Depth-related distribution and abundance of seastars (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) in the Porcupine Seabight and Porcupine Abyssal Plain, NE Atlantic. Deep-Sea Res I 49: 1901−1920
Rice AL, Billett DSM, Thurston MH, Lampitt RS (1991) The Institute of Oceanographic Sciences biology programme in the Porcupine Seabight: background and general introduction. J Mar Biol Assoc UK 71: 281−310
Rodríguez-Gironés MA, Santamaría L (2006) A new algorithm to calculate the nestedness temperature of presence-absence matrices. J Biogeogr 33: 924−935
Wagstaff, M., Howell, K.L., Bett, B. J., Billett, D. S. M., Brault, S., Stuart, C. T. & Rex, M. (2014) β-diversity of deep-sea holothurians and asteroids along a bathymetric gradient (NE Atlantic). Marine Ecology Progress Series, 508,177–185.
Gear code Gear type
BN1.5/3F Epibenthic sled
BN1.5/3M Epibenthic sled
BN1.5/C Epibenthic sled
BN1.5/P Epibenthic sled
BNC Epibenthic sled
BNF Epibenthic sled
GT Otter trawl
OT Otter trawl
OTSB14 Otter trawl
OTSB14D Otter trawl
ST Otter trawl