Rare species of tidal flat macrobenthic communities in Korea

초록

The information on the rare species in tidal flat macrobenthic community is one of the essential components in assessing the conservation measures of tidal flat but not considered yet in Korea. Quantitative data on a macrotidal flats along the west and southern coasts of Korea from the late 1980s until recently were collected and analyzed in order to perform the present study on the species rarity in these habitats. In the given data set, the total number of samples was 1019 and the number of species identified to species level was 510. We defined rare species as having frequency of occurrence of 0.5% or less of total samples and this coincided with species occurred in 5 or fewer samples. With the reasoning and limitation of the work, we selected and suggested 241 species (ca. 47% of total species) as the rare species of macrobenthic community in Korean tidal flats.