Decrease in allochthonous organic inputs in dark submarine caves, connection with lowering in benthic community richness

Abstract

Ten sediment trap arrays were deployed over two years for periods of 3 to 40 days in three different sampling points along a 50 m long Mediterranean submarine cave. Mean total particulate matter flux decreased strongly from the semi-dark area (3.3 g m⁻² d⁻¹) to the dark area (0.8 and 0.6 g m⁻² d⁻¹). Carbon represented 3.3% to 3.5% and nitrogen 0.34% to 0.38% of settling dry matter. The decrease in organic input from the entrance to the terminal part of the cave results in increasingly oligotrophic conditions with distance from the cave entrance. Horizontal resource limitation can be connected with a strong zonal decrease in fauna richness. Biomass declines both in hard substrate and soft bottom communities. Despite major differences, some similarities are noticed between oligotrophic conditions that may occur in the dark cave and those in around 1000 m depth ecosystems. Dark oligotrophic submarine caves can be considered to be good scale models for the study of some aspects of general trophic pathways.