Larger agglutinated foraminifera; comparison of assemblages from central North Pacific and western North Atlantic (Nares Abyssal Plain)

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Abstract
In the central North Pacific Ocean the abyssal meiobenthic community is dominated by agglutinated foraminifera. We identify and illustrate sixty-one species from five replicate box cores recovered from that region. This provides a taxonomic base for two previous studies performed on the same material, which described the patchy distribution of taxa and the interactions between faunal components. A comparison of large North Pacific forms with an abyssal foraminiferal assemblage from the western North Atlantic (Nares Abyssal Plain) shows a similar species compositon, indicating a wide distribution for many of these deep-sea agglutinated taxa. Differences in wall texture of agglutinated forms are apparently due to the random agglutination of available sediment, which is very-fine-grained red clay in the central North pacific, but is brown clay with a small silt content in the western North Atlantic.