TY - JOUR AB - This paper examines whether or not biogeographical and/or managerial divisions across the European seas can be validated using soft-bottom macrobenthic community data. The faunal groups used were: all macrobenthos groups, polychaetes, molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and sipunculans and the last five groups combined. In order to test the discriminating power of these groups, three criteria were used: (i) proximity, which refers to the expected closer faunal resemblance of adjacent areas relative to more distant ones; (ii) randomness, which in the present context is a measure of the degree to which the inventories of the various sectors, provinces or regions may in each case be considered as a random sample of the inventory of the next largest in a hierarchy of geographic scales; (iii) differentiation, which provides a measure of the uniqueness of the pattern. Results show that only polychaetes comply with all three criteria and that the only marine biogeographic system supported by the analyses is the one proposed by Longhurst (1998). Energy fluxes and other interactions between the planktonic and benthic domains, acting over evolutionary time, can be associated with the multivariate pattern derived from the macrobenthos datasets. The application of recently-developed third-stage multi-dimensional scaling ordination reveals that polychaetes produce a unique pattern when all systems are under consideration. Average island distance from the nearest coast, number of islands and the island surface area were the geographic variables best correlated with the pattern produced by polychaetes. Biogeographic patterns suggest a vicariance model dominating over the founder-dispersal model except for the semi-closed regional Seas where, however, a model substantially modified from the second option could be supported. AD - arvanitidis@her.hcmr.gr AU - Arvanitidis, Christos AU - Somerfield, Paul J. AU - Rumohr, Heye AU - Faulwetter, Sarah AU - Valavanis, Vasilis AU - Vasileiadou, Aikaterini AU - Chatzigeorgiou, Giorgos AU - Berghe, Edward Vanden AU - Vanaverbeke, Jan AU - Labrune, Céline AU - Grémare, Antoine AU - Zettler, Michael L. AU - Kędra, Monika AU - Włodarska-Kowalczuk, Maria AU - Aleffi, Ida F. AU - Amouroux, Jean Michel AU - Anisimova, Natalie AU - Bachelet, Guy AU - Büntzow, Marco AU - Cochrane, Sabine AU - Costello, Mark J. AU - Craeymeersch, Johan AU - Dahle, Salve AU - Degraer, Steven AU - Denisenko, Stanislav AU - Dounas, Costas AU - Duineveld, Gerard AU - Emblow, Chris AU - Escavarage, Vincent AU - Fabri, Marie-Claire AU - Fleischer, Dirk AU - Gray, John S. AU - Heip, Carlo AU - Herrmann, Marko AU - Hummel, Herman AU - Janas, Urszula AU - Karakassis, Ioannis AU - Kendall, Mike A. AU - Kingston, Paul AU - Kotwicki, Lech AU - Laudien, Jürgen AU - Mackie, Andrew S. Y. AU - Nevrova, Helen L. AU - Occhipinti-Ambrogi, Anna AU - Oliver, P. Graham AU - Olsgard, Frode AU - Palerud, Rune AU - Petrov, Alexei AU - Rachor, Eike AU - Revkov, Nikolai K. AU - Rose, Armin AU - Sardá, Rafael AU - Sistermans, Wil C. H. AU - Speybroeck, Jeroen AU - Van Hoey, Gert AU - Vincx, Magda AU - Whomersley, Paul AU - Willems, Wouter AU - Zenetos, Argyro CN - 1770 DO - 10.3354/meps07955 J2 - Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. KW - MarBef Marko (Diplomarbeit) macrobenthos benthos L1 - internal-pdf://1770-0018656512/1770.pdf PY - 2009 SN - 1616-1599 SP - 265-278 ST - Biological geography of the European seas: results from the MacroBen database T2 - Marine Ecology Progress Series TI - Biological geography of the European seas: results from the MacroBen database UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.32468 https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=qr&chl=http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.32468&chs=150x150&choe=UTF-8&chld=L|0 http://www.int-res.com/prepress/m07955.html VL - 382 ID - 1770 ER -