Page 6 - Macrofaunal_biodiversity_2006

lower values than the shallow ones (Stations 1, 2). The concentration of Chlorophyll-α
is higher for the Cretan beaches. The POC concentration values of the Elafonisi beach
are much higher than from other locations. Finally the sediments in the Maremma
sites are coarser than those in the Cretan beaches.

Faunal composition pattern
The overall Mediterranean intertidal macrobenthic fauna of the sandy beaches,
at least as derived from the sampling activities and from the literature, includes 181
species, belonging to 110 genera and 56 families. Polychaetes were the most numer-
ous taxon accounting for 49.72% of the total number of macrofaunal species, fol-
lowed by crustaceans (45.30%) and mollusks (4.98%).
Figure 3 shows the progress made on the number of the species inhabiting the
Content accessed by IP address 193.188.47.42 on 15/06/2017
Mediterranean sandy beach habitat, by the sampling activities carried out in the con-
text of the MEDCORE Project (2002-2005). The number of species has been aug-
mented by a 79.20%, in polychaetes.

Multivariate pattern at the pan-Mediterranean scale
The Cluster analysis performed on the macrofaunal species composition of the
Mediterranean sandy beaches resulted in the dendrogram of Figure 4. In this dendro-
gram, four major groups of intertidal locations can be seen: (i) The first group (Levant-
ine Basin group) is located on the basis of the dendrogram, and includes the beaches
from Rashid to Sid Abd El Rahman; (ii) The next group is the Aegean Sea – Central
Basin group, including beaches from Chios to Thermaikos; (iii) A third group on the
top of the dendrogram, corresponds to the Western Mediterranean – Adriatic Sea
areas, from the beaches of Smir to Adriatic/Vasto; (iv) The fourth group is located be-

200
180
160
140
Abundance 100
120
80
60
40
20
0
Polychaeta Crustacea Mollusca Total

Before MEDCORE After MEDCORE
Figure 3. Species numbers at Mediterranean sandy beaches before and after the MEDCORE Project.

MEDCORE N. Papageorgiou et alii