Nonlinear ecological processes driving the distribution of marine decapod larvae

The complexity of the natural processes lead to many nonlinear interacting factors that influence the distribution and survival of marine pelagic species, particularly in their larval phase. The management of these ecosystems requires techniques that unveil those interactions by studying the system globally, including all relevant variables and combining both community and environmental data in a single step. Specifically, we apply an unsupervised neural network, the Self-Organising Map (SOM), to a combined dataset of environmental and decapod larvae community data from the Balearic sea, obtained in two years with contrasting environmental scenarios, as an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) technique that provides a global and more detailed view of both the environmental processes and their influence on the distribution of such planktonic community.