The South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf (SOISS) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was the first MPA anywhere in the world to be designated entirely within the High Seas and is managed under the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). As part of efforts to undertake research and monitoring in and around the MPA, an international expedition ('SO-AntEco') was undertaken in the austral summer of 2016, on board the British Antarctic Survey research ship RRS James Clark Ross. The focus of the expedition was to contribute towards a better understanding of selected benthic habitats around the South Orkney Islands, and the biodiversity within those habitats, in relation to the geomorphic zones both inside and outside the SOISS MPA. This addresses a key objective set out by the draft SOISS MPA Research and Monitoring Plan (SC-CAMLR, 2014). The benthic assemblages of the SOISS MPA region were found to be strongly correlated with the texture of the seafloor, where hard substrates hosted a greater number of individuals, taxa and biomass with a dominance of filter feeding Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) taxa, and soft sediments were dominated mostly by deposit feeders. Substantial differences in the abundance of VME taxa were found between two sampling gears used (shallow underwater camera system and Agassiz trawl). We conclude that camera systems may be more suitable for VME assessments than the Agassiz trawl, but in addition where possible, additional trawling is advisable for collecting all faunal types and for higher taxonomic resolution. The designation of VME locations or MPAs based purely on geomorphic classification is not advisable, due to small scale variation in substrate and other local physical influences; however, the utility of such classifications may be improved with the inclusion of additional environmental factors e.g. substrate type.

New methods for species distribution models (SDMs) utilise presence–absence (PA) data to correct the sampling bias of presence‐only (PO) data in a spatial point process setting. These have been shown to improve species estimates when both datasets are large and dense. However, is a PA dataset that is smaller and patchier than hitherto examined able to do the same? Furthermore, when both datasets are relatively small, is there enough information contained within them to produce a useful estimate of species’ distributions? These attributes are common in many applications. A stochastic simulation was conducted to assess the ability of a pooled data SDM to estimate the distribution of species from increasingly sparser and patchier datasets. The simulated datasets were varied by changing the number of presence–absence sample locations, the degree of patchiness of these locations, the number of PO observations, and the level of sampling bias within the PO observations. The performance of the pooled data SDM was compared to a PA SDM and a PO SDM to assess the strengths and limitations of each SDM. The pooled data SDM successfully removed the sampling bias from the PO observations even when the presence–absence data were sparse and patchy, and the PO observations formed the majority of the data. The pooled data SDM was, in general, more accurate and more precise than either the PA SDM or the PO SDM. All SDMs were more precise for the species responses than they were for the covariate coefficients. The emerging SDM methodology that pools PO and PA data will facilitate more certainty around species’ distribution estimates, which in turn will allow more relevant and concise management and policy decisions to be enacted. This work shows that it is possible to achieve this result even in relatively data‐poor regions.

Information regarding the molluscs in this dataset is based on the Rauschert dredge samples collected during the Latitudinal Gradient Program (LGP) on board the R/V “Italica” in the Ross Sea (Antarctica) in the austral summer 2004. A total of 18 epibenthic dredge deployments/samplings have been performed at four different locations at depths ranging from 84 to 515m by using a Rauschert dredge with a mesh size of 500μm. In total 8,359 specimens have been collected belonging to a total of 161 species. Considering this dataset in terms of occurrences, it corresponds to 505 discrete distributional records (incidence data). Of these, in order of abundance, 5,965 specimens were Gastropoda (accounting for 113 species), 1,323 were Bivalvia (accounting for 36 species), 949 were Aplacophora (accounting for 7 species), 74 specimens were Scaphopoda (3 species), 38 were Monoplacophora (1 species) and, finally, 10 specimens were Polyplacophora (1 species). This data set represents the first large-scale survey of benthic micro-molluscs for the area and provides important information about the distribution of several species, which have been seldom or never recorded before in the Ross Sea. All vouchers are permanently stored at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA), Section of Genoa, enabling future comparison and crosschecking. This material is also currently under study, from a molecular point of view, by the barcoding project “BAMBi” (PNRA 2010/A1.10).

The Latitudinal Gradient Program (2002–2011)\ud aimed at understanding the marine and terrestrial ecosystems\ud existing along the Victoria Land coast (Ross Sea), an\ud area characterized by strong latitudinal clines in environmental\ud factors. During the program’s voyage of the Italian\ud RV ‘‘Italica’’ in 2004, a fine-mesh towed gear, the\ud ‘‘Rauschert dredge’’, was deployed for the first time at 18\ud stations in four latitudinal distinct shelf areas between\ud *71S and *74S. The collected samples contained\ud undescribed species and new records for the Ross Sea from\ud a variety of different marine taxa. Here, we describe the\ud molluscan fauna and investigate evidences for latitudinal\ud effects on molluscan diversity, abundance and assemblage\ud composition. No significant latitudinal trends were detected:\ud while diversity did not vary significantly with latitude,\ud species richness showed an apparent but non-significant\ud decrease with increasing latitude. Beta-diversity was found\ud to be high both within and between latitudinally distinct\ud shelf areas. A large fraction (*20 %) of the collected\ud molluscs corresponded to new species records for the Ross\ud Sea or undescribed species. Rarity in Antarctic molluscan\ud occurrences was confirmed, with singletons (i.e. species\ud represented by only a single individual) accounting for a\ud 22 % and uniques (i.e. species occurring in one sample\ud only) for a 43.5 % of the total presence. Our study of the\ud smaller macrofaunal benthic fraction showed that Antarctic\ud marine research still has far to go to have robust reference\ud baselines to measure possible changes in benthic communities,\ud even in the case of the assumed well-known, wellsampled\ud and well-studied group of Ross Sea shelf molluscs.\ud We advocate the use of fine-mesh trawling gears for\ud routine sampling activities in future Antarctic expeditions\ud to assess the full marine biodiversity

This dataset includes information regarding fungal strains collected during several Antarctic expeditions: the Italian National Antarctic Research program (PNRA) expeditions “X” (1994/1995), “XII”\ud (1996/1997), “XVII” (2001/2002), “XIX” (2003/2004), “XXVI” (2010/2011), the Czech “IPY Expedition”\ud (2007–2009) and a number of strains donated by E. Imre Friedmann (Florida State University) in 2001, isolated from samples collected during the U.S.A. Antarctic Expeditions of 1980-1982. Samples,\ud consisting of colonized rocks, mosses, lichens, sediments and soils, were collected in Southern and Northern Victoria Land of the continental Antarctica and in the Antarctic Peninsula. A total of 259 different strains were isolated, belonging to 32 genera and 38 species, out of which 12 represented new taxa. These strains are preserved in the Antarctic section of the Culture Collection of Fungi from Extreme Environments (CCFEE), which represents one of the collections associated with the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa, Italy), located at the Laboratory of Systematic Botany and Mycology, Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences (DEB), Tuscia University (Viterbo, Italy). The CCFEE hosts a total of 486 Antarctic fungal strains from worldwide extreme environments. Distributional records are reported here for 259 of these strains. The holotypes of the 12 new species included in this dataset are maintained at CCFEE and in other international collections: CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre (Utrecht, Netherlands); DBVPG, Industrial Yeasts Collection (University of Perugia, Italy); DSMZ, German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (Brunswick, Germany); IMI, International Mycological Institute (London, U.K.)