Zonal distribution of pelagic decapoda (crustacea) in the eastern North Atlantic and its relation to the physical oceanography

The day and night vertical distribution of pelagic decapods at six stations in the eastern North Atlantic on 20°W have been analysed using principal components analysis coupled with varimax rotation. The species have been classified into fourteen faunal groups and the principal components scores have been used to typify the Zoogeographic distribution and vertical migratory behaviour of these groups. The same method was used to classify the samples and it was found that the resulting zonation could be partly explained by the classical picture of oceanic circulation in the eastern North Atlantic. The explanatory power of this Zoogeographic hypothesis was quantified using Procrustes analysis and was found to explain about 50% of the sums-of-squares of the between samples correlation matrix.