Structuring Factors Of The Cumacean Communities Of The Continental Shelf Of Southeastern Brazil

Cumaceans are benthic crustaceans distributed worldwide, from intertidal to abyssal plains. They live in sandy and muddy bottoms and can sometimes be found in the water column. Despite their ecological importance as food items for fishes and other organisms and their usefulness as environmental indicators, very few studies have investigated their biodiversity and distribution in Brazil. The present paper reports an ecological study of the cumacean species found on the continental shelf off Santos, southeastern Brazil. It investigates the composition and spatio-temporal structure of the communities, the main environmental factors responsible for the maintenance of that structure and analyzes the effects of the seasonal oceanographic changes on the community descriptors. A grid of 21 stations located between 10 and 100 m depth was created in winter 2005 and summer 2006 and the sediment samples collected with a 0.1 m2 box corer. Twenty four species were obtained, five of them being the most numerous: Diastylis sexpectinata, D. sympterygiae, Eudorella sp., Oxyurostylis salinoi and Anchistylis notus, the latter highly dominant in summer. Diastylis sympterygiae was characteristic of the shallowest and least saline stations (