Intertidal zonation of macroinfauna on a dissipative, sandy beach at De Panne (Belgium): a pilot study

To elucidate vertical (= from high to low water mark) macroinfaunal community patterns on little-studied Belgian dissipative sandy beaches, macroinfauna was sampled at eight stations along a seaward transect at De Panne. Mean sand particle size was 196 µm, and the beach slope was ca. 1 : 90. Nineteen species were collected (excluding non-quantitatively sampled species), nine of which were polychaetes and eight were crustaceans. Total macroinfaunal abundance per station ranged from 103 to 585 ind./ m². Polychaetes and crustaceans were numerically dominant, comprising more than 98% of total numbers. Seaward spatial distributions of abundant species were interpreted to represent three biotic zones or macroinfaunal communities, as suggested by a kite diagram, TWINSPAN and CCA. These findings indicate that an environmental gradient of seaward variation in elevation above MLWS, sediment gravel fraction and sediment organic content largely determines the sandy beach community structure at De Panne