Epifauna refers to the animals living on top of the seafloor and some of them can have large size and many can be highly mobile. Typical representatives of the epifauna are echinoderms, gastropods and many decapod crustaceans (shrimp and crabs). Epifauna often has a strong relationship with the sediment characteristics, with more sessile, suspension-feeding taxa in regions with coarse substrate and high flow regimes and deposit-feeding taxa associated with low-flow, depositional regions. Epifauna diversity, biomass and abundance in AMBON is sampled from the beam trawls also used for fish sampling. [AMBON scientists: Katrin Iken, Bodil Bluhm]
