THE BARENTS SEA 

 Table 66 



155 



Sea are lower than those in many other sectors of the northern Atlantic (the 

 data are given in g/m 2 ). 



Dominant and characteristic species. The quantitative, biocoenotic investi- 

 gations carried out in the Barents Sea have provided a possibility of distin- 

 guishing the total number of dominant and characteristic benthos forms 

 {Table 67). 



Ecological characteristics of individual species. A. Schorygin (1928) has 

 worked out, on the basis of the Barents Sea echinoderms, an interesting 

 statistical method for studying the life conditions of organisms by comparing 

 the frequency of occurrence of a species with the indices of temperature 

 (thermopathy), salinity (halopathy), depth (bathopathy) and the bottom 

 constitution (edaphopathy). As a result of it he gives four curves for each 

 echinoderm species, characteristic for its degree of adaptation to the main 

 factors of its environment (Figs. 59 and 60). Schorygin's method was later 

 used by I. Mesiacev in his monograph on bivalves of the Barents Sea (1931). 

 Finally, V. Brotzkaya and L. Zenkevitch (1937) worked out, by analogy 

 with the Barents Sea fauna, a method of charting quantitative ecological 

 habitats which makes it possible to establish the optimum conditions for the 

 existence of a given form in the Sea. In order to construct his graph Schorygin 



