Integrated understanding of benthic community response to disturbance from an earthquake-triggered turbidity flow event

• First synthesis of megafauna, macrofauna, and meiofauna responses to turbidity flows. • Used 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake canyon-flushing as natural disturbance experiment. • Novel method was used to predict full recovery time for each size class. • Kaikōura Canyon benthic community showed overall resilience to major disturbance. • Life-history traits influenced differential recovery patterns among size classes. Sediment density flows are complex events that contain multiple flow types which can transport massive amounts of sediment across large distances. Turbidity flows are believed to have profound and lasting impacts on benthic communities in the deep sea. A canyon-flushing event in Kaikōura Canyon, New Zealand, triggered by the 2016 M w 7.8 Kaikōura Earthquake, included significant submarine mass wasting, debris, and turbidity flows, and provided an opportunity to investigate the effects of this disturbance. Previous studies have analysed the mega-, macro-, and meiofauna community structure, before and after the event using a time series of imagery and sediment cores. Additionally, community recovery was investigated in relation to changes in the physical characteristics of the habitat, using environmental variables from images and bathymetric variables and sediment cores. However, no attempt has been made to examine the overall community response to turbidity flow disturbance or to consider interactions between the different size classes. To address this gap, the data and results for each size class in Kaikōura Canyon were synthesised here with an emphasis on assessing the overall deep-sea benthic community response, and predicting time to recovery for the full community in Kaikōura Canyon. Overall, the benthic community in Kaikoura Canyon appears to be resilient to the disturbance with meiofauna showing the fastest recovery time followed by megafauna and then macrofauna. Differences in the life-history characteristics of mega-, macro- and meiofauna, as well as various interactions among the faunal size class communities, likely have influenced the recovery patterns observed.