Polychaetes from the Irving, Meteor and Plato seamounts, North Atlantic ocean: origin and geographical relationships

Data came from the Irving, Meteor and Plato seamounts and, were obtained during the Seamount 2 Expedition on board the RV 'Le Suroit' in 1993. On the three seamounts, polychactes were sampled at 44 sites from 260 to 1800 in: 8 sites on Irving, 27 on Meteor and 9 on Plato. In all five seamounts, 1753 individuals were collected: 403 on Atlantis, 346 on Hyeres, 523 on Irving, 387 on Meteor and 94 on Plato. The species richness from the five seamounts is 53: 31 on Atlantis, 24 on Hyeres, 20 on Irving, 28 on Meteor and 21 species on Plato. Only nine species are present on all five seamounts. Three families Onuphidae, Amphinomidae and Eunicidae are dominant. Two groups of seamounts were identified by cluster analysis: Atlantis and Hyeres and, Irving, Meteor and, Plato. The distribution of the polychaetes collected on these five seamounts are compared with the polychaete fauna from the North Atlantic ocean.