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Harbours as marine habitats: hydroid assemblages on sea-walls compared with natural habitats

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Abstract

Sessile hydrozoans constitute a common component of marine rocky communities. We compared the hydrozoan assemblages occurring on sea-walls of commercial harbours with those on natural rocky cliffs along the southern Iberian Peninsula, to identify differences in the multivariate structure of the assemblages and species richness. Harbour hydroid assemblages significantly differed from natural ones mainly due to their qualitative composition. Medusa-less taxa, optimized for low dispersal and long-term persistence on the substratum, are barely represented in harbours, but abundant at natural sites. “Port species” assemblages were composed of (1) small, short-living species with typical opportunistic characteristics; (2) cosmopolitan large-size taxa, significantly represented both in harbours and in natural habitats; (3) non-indigenous species. Contrarily to the expected lower richness of communities in confined areas, our results demonstrate that richness of hydroid assemblages in harbours is comparable to that of natural habitats.

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Acknowledgments

This study has been supported by the projects P05-RNM-369 (Junta de Andalucía), PCI2005-A7-0347 (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science), A/5481/06 and A/8688/07 (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation), and from the European Community FP7/2007-2013 under Grant Agreement No. 266445 (VECTORS). We thank the Port Authorities of Cádiz Bay and Almería for their collaboration, and the Scientific Diving Unit of the University of Cádiz who assisted us in sampling expeditions and D. De Vito, F. Boero and M. D. Medel, who helped us with the identification of some specimens.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Zoología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Sevilla, Avda. Reina Mercedes, 6, 41012, Seville, Spain

    César Megina & Pablo J. López-González

  2. Centro Andaluz de Ciencia y Tecnología Marinas (CACYTMAR), Universidad de Cádiz, Campus Universitario de Puerto Real. Avda. República Saharaui s/n, 11510, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain

    Manuel M. González-Duarte

  3. Laboratorio di Biologia Evolutiva degli Invertebrati marini, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie, Biologiche ed Ambientali (DISTEBA), Università del Salento, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Stefano Piraino

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  1. César Megina
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  2. Manuel M. González-Duarte
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Correspondence to César Megina.

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Communicated by F. Bulleri.

César Megina and Manuel M. González-Duarte contributed equally to this work.

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Megina, C., González-Duarte, M.M., López-González, P.J. et al. Harbours as marine habitats: hydroid assemblages on sea-walls compared with natural habitats. Mar Biol 160, 371–381 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-012-2094-3

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