Infauna, epifauna and demersal fish communities in the North Sea: community patterns and underlying processes

In order to provide a broad ecosystem context for the interpretation of the infauna community data revealed during the ‘North Sea Benthos Project 2000’, the data were analysed in conjunction with epifaunal and demersal fish assemblage data collected under other (EU and ICES) auspices. The objectives were to compare the spatial community patterns of all three faunal components and to relate the spatial patterns in the different faunal components to environmental parameters to get insights into their functional similarities and differences. Patterns in the distribution of infaunal, epifaunal and fish assemblage types determined from cluster analyses were very similar, with major distinctions between the southern (