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Faunal composition pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Multivariate pattern at the pan-Mediterranean scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Biodiversity across the Mediterranean intertidal habitat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Introduction

Mediterranean marine biodiversity has received little attention, despite its cultural
and commercial significance for the surrounding countries (e.g. Arvanitidis et al.,
2002). According to Bianchi & Mori (2000) the marine macroscopic species living in
this sea range between 4 and 18% of the total of world marine species. Mediterranean
Content accessed by IP address 193.188.47.42 on 15/06/2017
littoral macrofauna, especially that of the eastern part of the region, has not yet been
fully studied and thus it presents a special interest from the scientific, ecological and
managerial points of view (Koukouras & Russo, 1991).
Sandy beach communities are subjected to a variety of physical and biological dis-
turbances which make them one of the fundamental and most dynamic transitional
environments (Brown & McLachlan, 1990; Turner et al., 1995; Brown et al., 2000).
The structure and function of the benthic components play a very important role in
biochemical and metabolic processes of the sediments with important implications
for the carbon cycle and the food chain (e.g. Fabiano et al., 2004).
A number of studies refer to the Mediterranean sandy beach biota, but their main focus
is on the number of species and species composition; further on, in most of these studies
a “one-off” sampling design has been implemented, a fact which has led to the collection
of limited information needed for a better understanding of the severe fluctuations in the
values of the abiotic and biotic variables in this neglected environment. The purpose of
this study was to search for biodiversity patterns along the Mediterranean sandy beaches;
macrobenthic invertebrates have been chosen as a key component of the mid- and sublit-
toral beach zone. Variations in the values of the environmental variables were analyzed
along four sandy beaches, possessing different geomorphological characteristics.
The aims of this study were: (1) to explore the spatial pattern of the main abio-
tic variables of the mid- and sublittoral zone in Eastern and Western Mediterranean
sandy beaches; (2) to search for biodiversity patterns along the Mediterranean sandy
beach environment by using sample-size-sample-effort free biodiversity indices.

Material and Methods

Data

Two sources of data have been used: (i) Abiotic and biotic data collected at four
microtidal sandy beaches, covering a wide morphodynamic spectrum: Elafonisi, Pahia

MEDCORE N. Papageorgiou et alii