Macrobenthos of the Coastal Shallow Zone
in the Southwestern Part of the Kara Sea

N. V. Kucheruk*, V. O. Mokievskiy*, and N. E. Denisov**

* Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

** State Institute of Oceanography, Moscow, Russia

Received February 28, 1996; in final form, April 2, 1997

Abstract—The paper contains a description of species composition and structure of the communities of mac-
robenthos of the coastal shallow zone of the southwestern part of the Kara Sea (the coast of the Baydara Bay).
The depths from 0 to 3–5 m are inhabited by peculiar fauna, which sharply differs in species composition from
the deeper parts of the area. Nineteen species of macrobenthos were discovered in the coastal zone; only eight
of them occur deeper than 5 m. The typical species of the coastal complex are the mollusks Cyrtodaria kurriana
and Macoma baltica. Several methods were used to distinguish the communities within the faunistically uni-
form coastal zone: estimation of similarity by the Pianka index, principal component analysis, and comparison
of the sets of the most abundant species. All the methods led to similar results. The community dominated by
C. kurriana and M. baltica develops over mobile sands. In the accumulative zones with weakened hydro- and
lithodynamic regimes, C. kurriana is absent, and polychaete S. filicornis and amphipod M. longicornis enter
the list of dominants. At the stations where the features of environment are intermediate, the community struc-
ture is also intermediate between the community C. kurriana–M. baltica and the community S. filicornis–
M.longicornis. The analysis of rank distribution of species in the communities illustrated that, under unfavor-
able conditions, the observed distributions in the communities are similar to that of the “broken-stick model.”
The rank distribution of the community C. kurriana–M. baltica poorly corresponds to any of the theoretical
models. After subdivision of this community into trophic guilds, the rank structures of each guild correspond
well to the model of a geometric series.

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