Zoogeography of decapod crustaceans in the Euro-Asiatic Seas of Arctic region

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All Russian collections of Arctic Decapoda in the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, S.-Petersburg, in Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, Moscow and in the Institute of Oceanology, Moscow which were obtained during different expeditions in Norwegian, Greenland and north Russian Seas from 1880 to 1996 were examined. Besides the materials collected in coastal water of the Barents and White Seas during the diver investigations by Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography were analyzed. Approximately 100 species and subspecies of Decapoda were occurred in the area investigated. The fauna of Decapoda of Euro-Asiatic Arctic Seas includes subtropical, boreal, arctic-boreal and arctic species. The percent of the Arctic species in decapod fauna increases from the Norwegian Sea to the East-Siberian Sea from 9.7 up to 68.8 % and then sharply decreases to 12.1 % in the southern part of the Chukchi Sea. All the Arctic species belong to group Caridea. A few species of Anomura and Brachyura were observed in the Barents and the White Seas, and also in the Chukchi Sea and in the eastern Laptev Sea. The endemics of the Arctic regions make approximately 3 % from all species. Two caridean genera Bythocaris and Bythocarides are presented the deep-water fauna in the Arctic Basin. On the basis of the results of the analysis of T-S pairs six ecological groups were identified for the decapod species from the Euro-Asiatic Seas basins.