Resumen de Modern Benthic Foraminiferal Diversity Along the Fjords of Svalbard Archipelago: Diversity Evaluation
M. Jima, P. R. Jayachandran, S. Bijoy Nandan
The diversity of benthic Foraminifera in the High Arctic Fjords of the Svalbard archipelago and adjacent ridges in the Fram Strait has been evaluated by reviewing all the available literature published since 1984. In the western part of the Svalbard archipelago, the documentation of foraminiferal species is relatively good when compared with the eastern side. In total, 324 modern foraminiferal species belonging to 141 genera and 68 families have been reported from the fords of Svalbard.
Among them, 111 species are agglutinated, 198 are calcareous and 15 have proteinaceous tests. In addition, 116 species belonging to 76 genera and 45 families are documented from the ridges of Fram Strait with 39 exclusive species. Based on these studies, Svalbard fords are divided into four geographical regions: South West Fjords (SWF; 208 species), North West Fjords (NWF; 196 species), South East Fjords (SEF; 112 species), and North East Fjords (NEF; 96 species). The regions are then compared with the dataset from the ridges of Fram Strait (RDG; 116 species). Based on the Bray-Curtis similarity analysis, all four regions of the Svalbard archipelago are grouped into a single cluster with the highest similarity (69.4%) between SWF and NWF and overall similarity of 44.6%, compared with 36.5% between Svalbard fords combined and the RDG. The Kulczynski-2 similarity and βw diversity indices also confrmed the uniqueness of western Svalbard ford. This could be mainly due to the infuence of the warm Atlantic water masses on this region. The objective of this work is to review the distribution and diversity of benthic foraminiferal species in the Svalbard archipelago and forms the baseline for understanding the foraminiferal diversity and assemblage composition around the Svalbard Archipelago on a single stretch against which future changes in this area can be assessed and could contribute to the formulation of conservation plans for this region in the context of global climate change
