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17099

Intermittent study of benthic fauna in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria, Egypt.

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Last updated: 01 Jan 2025

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Abstract

The hard bottom benthic fauna at a fixed site in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria, Egypt was studied during intermittent seasons from 2014 to 2018. The results recorded 26 species, belong mainly to polychaetes (11 species) and crustaceans (9 species), in addition to 2 species of mollusks and one species for each of Cnidaria, Porifera, Bryozoa and Sipuncula. The species richness varied between 9 species after the winter storm of 2014 to 21 species in spring 2015, while the numerical abundance of the total fauna fluctuated between 1007 ind./m2 in spring 2017 and 3442.3 ind./m2 before the winter storm of 2014. The Shannon diversity index was low (0.98 - 1.51), associated with low evenness (0.39 -0.69). Polychaetes constituted 45.2% of the total faunal count, followed by crustaceans (35.2%), and mollusks (19.4%). Five species only appeared to be responsible for 91.7% of the total count, namely the polychaetes Pseudonereis anomala Gravier (1899) and Spirobranchus triqueter Linnaeus (1758), the amphipod Elasmopus pectenicrus Spence Bate (1862), the isopod Cirolana bovina Barnard (1940), and the bivalve Brachidontes pharaonis P. Fischer (1870). Other species sustained relatively high counts, forming high percent of the total population at certain time, such as the polychaetes Syllis schulzi Hartmann-Schröder (1960), Loimia medusa Savigny (1822), the isopod Dynamene bidentata Adams (1800), and the gastropod Fissurella sp. The counts and relative abundance of the major groups as well as the dominant species experienced pronounced temporal variation throughout the period of study.

DOI

10.21608/ejabf.2018.17099

Keywords

Polychaetes, Crustaceans, coastal fauna, Alexandria coast, Eastern Harbour

Authors

First Name

Rasha

Last Name

Hamdy

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Orcid

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First Name

Mohamed

Last Name

Dorgham

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Volume

22

Article Issue

4

Related Issue

1880

Issue Date

2018-09-01

Receive Date

2018-08-26

Publish Date

2018-09-01

Page Start

209

Page End

223

Print ISSN

1110-6131

Online ISSN

2536-9814

Link

https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/article_17099.html

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https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=17099

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15

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Original Article

Type Code

103

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries

Publication Link

https://ejabf.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Intermittent study of benthic fauna in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria, Egypt.

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Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023