Towards understanding the influence of environmental conditions on demersal resources and ecosystems in the western Mediterranean: Motivations, aims and methods of the IDEADOS project

• IDEADOS project follows a research on the influence of environment on demersal ecosystems and resources off Balearic Islands.
• This multidisciplinary project expands the study to the pelagic domain, on which these oligotrophic ecosystems depend.
• It also emphasizes on the study of the trophic coupling between the benthic and the meso- and bathypelagic domains.
• Acoustic methods have been applied for the first time in the Mediterranean to characterise meso- and bathypelagic communities.
• Results show complex interactions between pelagic and benthic domains at different temporal scales and organization levels.

The multidisciplinary IDEADOS project funded by the Spanish Government was developed between 2009 and 2012 aiming to determine the relationships between environmental conditions and the nekto-benthic slope communities in two areas of the western Mediterranean, north and south of the Balearic Islands, with different geomorphologic and hydrodynamic characteristics. In this paper we describe the background and goals of this project, its study area and the sampling strategy applied, as well as the main conclusions reached in a final workshop. This volume is a compendium of the main contributions presented at this workshop, which have been peer-reviewed and can represent the state of the art of the complex interactions between the pelagic domain and the slope benthic communities, within the context of the hydrodynamics and oligotrophy of the Balearic Islands, and considering different temporal scales and organization levels.