Fig 1.
Three-dimensional sliced models with representative images of different communities, distributed along the entrance-interior axis of (A) Fara and (B) Agios Vasilios caves, as visualized with ‘cavetopo’ software [40]. The blue lines represent the start-to-end cave axes along which distance measurements were taken. Green circles represent interpolated cross-sections of the caves, providing a three-dimensional perspective to the models.
Table 1.
Biological traits and trait modalities used for studying the functional structure in the surveyed marine caves.
Fig 2.
Substratum coverage along the horizontal axis of (A) Fara cave and (B) Agios Vasilios cave. Standard error of mean (SE) is presented in error bars. BM: unidentified non-living biogenic material.
Fig 3.
Coverage per taxon (log scale) along the horizontal axis of (A) Fara cave and (B) Agios Vasilios cave. Standard error of mean (SE) is presented in error bars. Varia includes Foraminifera, Mollusca, Brachiopoda and Ascidiacea.
Fig 4.
Resemblance for (A) TCS and (B) TCF for Fara cave and (C) TCS and (D) TCF for Agios Vasilios cave with respect to the distance from the entrance and the position on the walls of the cave (ceiling, left wall, right wall). Numbers indicate distance from cave entrance. TCS, total community structure; TCF, total community function.
Table 2.
Results of PERMANOVA test with the distance and position factors for the total community structure and function in Fara and Agios Vasilios caves.
Fig 5.
Resemblance for (A) SCS and (B) SCF for Fara cave and (C) SCS and (D) SCF Agios Vasilios cave with respect to the distance from the entrance and the position on the walls of the cave (ceiling, left wall, right wall). Numbers indicate distance from cave entrance. SCS, sponge community structure; SCF, sponge community function.
Table 3.
Results of PERMANOVA test with the distance and position factors for the sponge community structure and function in Fara and Agios Vasilios caves.
Table 4.
Strength and significance of the relationship (RELATE test) between all pairs of similarity matrices regarding the structural and functional patterns of the total community and the sponge community of Fara and Agios Vasilios caves.