Differential rates of benthic foraminiferal test production in surface and subsurface sediment habitats in the southern Adriatic Sea

Live communities and corresponding dead assemblages of benthic foraminifera recovered in box cores from the southern Adriatic Sea differ significantly with respect to the relative abundances of species and higher-order groups of foraminifera. Taphonomic destruction of disintegration-prone arenaceous species is held responsible for the observed strong reduction in relative abundance of arenaceous foraminifera in the dead assemblage. Systematic differences in live and dead relative abundances of calcareous and calcite-cemented arenaceous species may be due to differential rates of test production rather than selective taphonomic destruction. We observed that epifaunal or shallow-infaunal foraminifera are often overrepresented in the dead assemblage, compared to their relative number in the live community, whereas deeper-infaunal species tend to be underrepresented. On this basis we hypothesize that test production rate of benthic foraminiferal species may be related to their living depth in the sediment.