| Abstract: | The benthic macroinfauna (>500 μm) of San Vicente Bay, Central Chile (36°44′S; 73°09′W) was studied at 8 sublittoral stations along a 6.5 km length transect from the San Vicente fishery harbor out to the open sea, during October 1991, January 1992 and October 1992. Structural changes of the benthic macroinfauna were evaluated a) functionally in terms of polychaete trophic guilds, and b) numerical classification and ecological ordination. Multivariate analysis was used to explore polychaete fedding guild responses to environmental variables. The principal objective of the study was to test whether changes in functional groups (within and between stations) are related to perturbation induced by anthropogenic organic enrichment, or are a consequence of natural environmental fluctuations. Trophic guilds of polychaetes associated with the sandy environment of the bay, showed a clear seasonal dominance of carnivores during the spring 1991–1992 and of surface suspension - deposit feeders, sessiles or discretely motile and tentacled polychaetes (F-SD-SDT, see Annex) in summer 1992. This guild distribution could be due to the sediment stability and a greater niche diversification in the more sandy stations. However, there were only a few significant relationships between trophic guilds and total organic matter and silt-clay fraction. This limits the utility of the guilds as indicators of perturbations induced by organic enrichment. Over 95% of the variation in the guild data was explained by environmental factors such as water depth, station distance from the harbor, silt-clay, sand, grain size and organic matter content. The comparison between reported faunistic and sedimentary data and the data obtained in this study, suggests that there is an increase of the organic enrichment of the sediments in the most inner area of this embayment. However, there is no evidence of this being directly responsible for the polychaete feeding guild distribution of San Vicente Bay. |
