Report of the Benthos Ecology Working Group (BEWG)

The Benthos Ecology Working Group (BEWG) was hosted by the Instituto Español de Oceanografía and held its 2013 meeting at the Rectorado of the Universitada da Coruña, both in A Coruña, Spain. The meeting was attended by 16 participants, rep-resenting 8 countries. The meeting was structured along the four BEWG core busi-ness issues: Benthic long-term series and climate change, benthic indicators, species distribution modelling and disentanglement of the link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The work done by the Study Group on Climate-related changes in the Benthos of the North Sea (SGCBNS) was reviewed and agreements were made to further the work initiated within BEWG. The launch of the initiative to facilitate the analysis of benthic long-term series (BeLTS-net), shared among BEWG and SGCBNS, was prepared for.