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Soft-Bottom Fauna of a Tropical (Banc d’ Arguin, Mauritania) and a Temperate (Juist Area, German North Sea Coast) Intertidal Area

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Ecological Comparisons of Sedimentary Shores

Part of the book series: Ecological Studies ((ECOLSTUD,volume 151))

Abstract

Numerous studies all over the world have dealt with the ecology of the intertidal soft-bottom fauna. Piersma et al. (1993) reviewed literature data of the zoobenthic biomass of intertidal soft-bottom areas in tropical and temperate latitudes. They encountered a tremendous variety of methods and therefore claimed methodically standardized, comparable studies, in the ideal case performed by identical persons or institutions. A number of studies fulfill this prerequesite, e.g. Reise (1991) (investigating the northern temperate German, the tropical Thailandic and the southern temperate Chilenic coasts), Wolff and Smit (1990) (comparing Mauritania and the Dutch Wadden Sea) and, in a further study (Wolff 1991), also including a part of the Rhine-Scheldt Delta. Reise (1991) and Wolff (1991) suggested a hypothesis of large-scale gradients with a significant increase of macrobenthic species richness but a decline of abundance and biomass from high temperate to low tropical geographical latitudes. Intermediate values from southern Portugal (Sprung 1994) seem to support this view.

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Authors
  1. H. Michaelis
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  2. W. J. Wolff
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Wattenmeerstation Sylt, 25992, List, Germany

    Karsten Reise

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Michaelis, H., Wolff, W.J. (2001). Soft-Bottom Fauna of a Tropical (Banc d’ Arguin, Mauritania) and a Temperate (Juist Area, German North Sea Coast) Intertidal Area. In: Reise, K. (eds) Ecological Comparisons of Sedimentary Shores. Ecological Studies, vol 151. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56557-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56557-1_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-62517-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-56557-1

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