A description of a highly diverse soft-bottom community in Kingston Harbour,Jamaica

A highly diverse soft-bottom community in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica is described to provide additional information on the structure of tropical benthic communities. It is shown that the community has a level of diversity unique to stable tropical environments, that dominance by a few species is greatly reduced,and that there are no true parallels to this community in similar environments. The community described seems to fit Sanders' stability-time hypothesis. The density and standing crop of the community are low, and possible explanations for this are discussed. Continuous year-round breeding, short life-spans, and fast turnover rates are suggested as the most important factors regulating biomass in the community described.