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Macrofaunal diversity of infralittoral cobble beds in the Maltese Islands

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

The Mediterranean “biocoenosis of infralittoral pebbles” has been poorly studied, but is generally considered to be impoverished. Systematic sampling of cobble beds at 17 sites around the Maltese Islands yielded a total of 35,687 individuals belonging to 310 different taxa. Very shallow sites (<2 m depth) had a slightly poorer faunal assemblage than deeper ones (2-12 m depth), but still included 152 taxa. These results suggest that infralittoral cobbles beds may not be as impoverished as previously thought, probably due to the high structural complexity of these habitats.