Effects of cold winters and regime shifts on macrofauna communities in shallow coastal regions

Several ecosystem components in the North Sea have undergone fundamental changes following climatic change and this paper aims to establish if these changes also have affected macrofauna communities in the southern North Sea. From 1978 to 2005, the macrofauna communities were sampled seasonally in the sublittoral zone off the island of Norderney, one of the East Frisian barrier islands. Abundance, biomass and species numbers of single species or larger taxonomic groups showed differences in long-term variability and eurytherm species dominated in the study area. After the cold winter of 1978/79 until the mid 1980s a higher percentage of arctic-boreal species were found, while after 1988 the percentage of species with a southern distribution in the North Sea increased in connection with a smooth biological regime shift and a positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. Interface-feeders dominated the communities, followed by sand lickers and subsurface deposit-feeders. The latter were more abundant after cold winters, probably due to their ability to utilise dead buried faunal organic matter. Multivariate analyses revealed that cold winters affected the community structure more briefly, while a smooth biological regime shift in 1989/1990 and a climate regime shift induced abrupt biological regime shift in 2001/2002 caused longer-term progressive change in the macrofauna community structure. The significant correlation between macrofauna abundance, biomass and species number and the NAO index failed until 2001 due to a change in climate systems over the northern Atlantic hemisphere.