Study and Cartography of the Benthic Communities of Medes Islands (NE Spain)

Abstract. A bionomic study and cartography of the benthos of Medes Islands (NE Spanish coast, Catalan Costa Brava) is presented. From 1977 to 1980 the fauna and flora of the meso- and macrobenthos were sampled by a triple sampling procedure: standard, visual and photographic samples were simultaneously taken along underwater transects, yielding 124 punctual inventories, 176 visual inventories and some 1000 photographic "samples". These, together with the floristic and faunistic study of each algal and invertebrate group, served as the basis for the bionomic survey of the islands' bottoms. In a first approach, the hard substrata of the infra- and circalittoral Stages were studied, along with the Posidonia meadows, and their communities diagrammatically sketched along representative transects. Further work focused on the submarine caves and tunnels of the area, the supra- and mediolittoral communities and the coastal detritic soft bottoms. The bionomic survey of the Medes Islands has emphasized, with minor differences, the basic similarity between the archipelago's benthic communities and those described elsewhere in the Northwestern Mediterranean. The identified communities or groups of communities are the trottoir, the photophilic algae, the sciaphilic algae (precoralligenous), the coralligenous and cave communities on hard substrata, as well as the Posidonia meadow and the coastal detritic community on soft substrata. These have been used as the basic macro-units in the bionomic cartography of the islands, which has been plotted on a 1:2000 map. Their distribution, over a surface area of some 2 km² and to a depth of up to 60–70 m, follows that of the heterogeneous substrate, its slope and the hydrodynamical and illumination conditions of the area.