Xu Y et al. (2018), Spatiotemporal patterns of the macrofaunal comm...

ECB-ART-46099

PLoS One 2018 Jan 01;131:e0192023. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192023.

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Spatiotemporal patterns of the macrofaunal community structure in the East China Sea, off the coast of Zhejiang, China, and the impact of the Kuroshio Branch Current.

Xu Y , Yu F , Li X , Ma L , Dong D , Kou Q , Sui J , Gan Z , Gong L , Yang M , Wang Y , Sun Y , Wang J , Wang H .

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The Kuroshio Current intrudes in the bottom layer of the East China Sea continental shelf from the northeast of Taiwan via two bottom branches named the Nearshore Kuroshio Branch Current (NKBC, along the 60 m isobath) and the Offshore Kuroshio Branch Current (OKBC, along the 100 m isobath). However, knowledge on the macrofaunal responses to these bottom branches is limited. This study examined the variations in the benthic macrofaunal community in a section of the East China Sea under the influence of the NKBC. Seven sites corresponding to three regions (the west, middle and east region) were sampled using an Agassiz trawl net at a monthly rate from February to November 2015 (except in August). A total of 270 macrofaunal species were collected in this study. Cluster analysis and nMDS ordination revealed three communities: the inshore, Kuroshio and offshore communities, roughly corresponding to the west, middle and east of NKBC route. Significant differences in the species composition (one-way PERMANOVA) and diversity indices (one-way ANOVA) among the regions and communities were observed, while no statistically significant difference among the months was detected. The indicator species also varied among the communities, with Sternaspis scutata and Odontamblyopus rubicundus dominating the inshore community, Camatopsis rubida, Schizaster lacunosus and Craspidaster hesperus dominating the Kuroshio community, and Portunus argentatus, Champsodon snyderi and Coelorinchus multispinulosus dominating the offshore community. Some rare species (e.g., Neobythites sivicola) may indicate the passage of the NKBC better than the indicator species. A redundancy analysis was used to describe the relationship between the macrofaunal species and environmental variables in this study. Water depth and turbidity played important roles in the distribution of the macrofauna. S. scutata and O. rubicundus were associated with high turbidity and shallow depth, while Plesionika izumiae and P. argentatus were associated with low turbidity and deep depth. This study outlines the impact of the NKBC on the distribution patterns of the macrofaunal community of the East China Sea. More studies are needed to understand the detailed interactions between macrofauna and the NKBC in the future.

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Genes referenced: impact LOC100887844 LOC100893907 LOC115923516

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	Fig 1. Location map of the sampling sites in the East China Sea.(a) Kuroshio and its branches (NKBC: Nearshore Kuroshio Branch Current; OKBC: Offshore Kuroshio Branch Current), as suggested by Yang et al. [11] and Wang et al. [13]. (b) Seven sampling sites corresponding to three regions (Site 1–3: the west region; Site 4: the middle region; Site 5–7: the east region). (c) Sampling procedure for each month (the black rectangle: physical, chemical and biological sampling site; the white rectangle: only physical and chemical sampling site).
	Fig 2. Principal component analysis (PCA) plots for the environmental variables.Correlations of the environmental variables (a), eigenvalues (b), and multivariate analyses of the environmental variables through a scatter diagram of regions (c) and months (d).
	Fig 3. The distribution of macrofauna in the sampling sites.The dendrogram shows the similarity relationship of the sites (Bray-Curtis distance, Q mode) and species (Chi-square distance, R mode) based on Ward’s hierarchical clustering method. The heatmap shows the square root-transformed abundance data standardized by rows. The white and blue colours indicate weak correlations (low ratios) between the species abundances and sampling sites, while the pink and red colours show strong correlations (high ratios).
	Fig 4. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordinations (nMDS) for macrofauna (a) and the spatial distribution of each community (b) in the study area.
	Fig 5. Relative number of species of major taxonomic groups for communities, regions and months.
	Fig 6. Monthly variations of the abundance of species with significant IndVal for each community.The abundance increases linearly with the area of a circle and the largest circle corresponded to 1.525 × 106 ind./km2. The number in the bracket was the IndVal index. significant at 0.05 level; significant at 0.01 level; **significant at 0.001 level.
	Fig 7. RDA triplot showing relationships between the species and environmental variables (scaling = 2).Solid red lines depict significant environmental variables, while dashed red lines do not in (a). The distribution of species in the RDA triplot is shown in (b).

References [+] :

Shuai, Temporal Patterns of Larval Fish Occurrence in a Large Subtropical River. 2016, Pubmed