Abstract
Different taxa have had different degrees of success in invading and proliferating in the deep sea. The reasons for these differences are not well known, and exemplars need to be studied to provide insight as to factors that lead to success in the deep sea. Because the abundance of the deep-sea fauna taken as a whole declines with depth, the absolute abundance of a taxon is not an appropriate metric of its success. Rather, a taxon whose abundance declines as rapidly as or less rapidly than the general trend should be considered successful. In this paper, I used the macrofauna to define the general trend of abundance change with depth. When I compared the trend of abundance of harpacticoids to that for macrofauna, I found that harpacticoid abundance decreased less rapidly. Thus, harpacticoids are unusually successful in the deep sea. The reasons for their success are unknown, but I discuss three possible explanations.
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Thistle, D. (2001). Harpacticoid copepods are successful in the soft-bottom deep sea. In: Lopes, R.M., Reid, J.W., Rocha, C.E.F. (eds) Copepoda: Developments in Ecology, Biology and Systematics. Developments in Hydrobiology, vol 156. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47537-5_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47537-5_20
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