A multi-scale study of the biodiversity of the benthic infauna of the high-latitude Kongsfjord,Svalbard

A multi-scale study of patterns of biodiversity of the fauna of the upper basin of the Kongsfjord, Svalbard (78°55′N, 11°56′E) revealed that there were low rates of species turnover at distances in excess of 2 km. Where patterns within the assemblage were detected, they were largely the result of changing patterns of dominance within a restricted species pool of, for the most part, small-bodied animals. There are relatively few hierarchical studies of species turnover at the scale we have reported and all report different spatial relationships between faunal similarity and separation of the samples. It is strongly recommended that comparative measures of species turnover, estimates of the size of species pools, or comparative estimates of species diversity should include information on the spatial distribution, relative to habitat patchiness, of the samples considered.