Marine studies at the western Antarctic Peninsula: Priorities, progress and prognosis

Meredith, Michael P.; Stefels, Jacqueline; Leeuwe, Maria A. van

doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2017.02.002

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The Antarctic Peninsula ecosystem is changing rapidly due to the impact of climate change and increased temperatures, along with profound changes in the physical environment, including timing and reduction of sea ice, melting of ice shelves, retreat of coastal glaciers, and increased precipitation [ 34 – 37 ]. These dramatic changes are threatening these rich but fragile biological communities, where the roles and interactions amongst species is still poorly understood and thus leaving notable gaps in our understanding of climate change implications to Antarctic biodiversity, ecosystems, and their future conservation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial patterns of continental shelf faunal community structure along the Western Antarctic Peninsula

et al. 2020

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Knowledge of continental shelf faunal biodiversity of Antarctica is patchy and as such, the ecology of this unique ecosystem is not fully understood. To this end, we deployed baited cameras at 20 locations along~500 km of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) at depths from 90 to 797 m. We identified 111 unique taxa, with mud bottom accounting for 90% of the dominant (� 50% cover) habitat sampled. Amphipoda comprised 41% of the total maximum number of individuals per camera deployment (MaxN) and occurred on 75% of deployments. Excluding this taxon, the highest MaxN occurred around King George/25 de Mayo Island and was driven primarily by the abundance of krill (Euphausiidae), which accounted for 36% of total average MaxN among deployments around this island. In comparison, krill comprised 22% of total average MaxN at Deception Island and only 10% along the peninsula. Taxa richness, diversity, and evenness all increased with depth and depth explained 18.2% of the variation in community structure among locations, which may be explained by decreasing ice scour with depth. We identified a number of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem taxa, including habitat-forming species of cold-water corals and sponge fields. Channichthyidae was the most common fish family, occurring on 80% of all deployments. The Antarctic jonasfish (Notolepis coatsorum) was the most frequently encountered fish taxa, occurring on 70% of all deployments and comprising 25% of total MaxN among all deployments. Nototheniidae was the most numerically abundant fish family, accounting for 36% of

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial patterns of continental shelf faunal community structure along the Western Antarctic Peninsula

et al. 2020

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“…The WAP is one of the areas that has been undergoing profound changes in recent decades, due to rapid environmental change (Cook et al, 2016; Meredith et al, 2017), with warming of the upper layers of the shelf exceeding 1°C (reviewed by Moffat and Meredith, 2018). Winter shallow seawater temperatures around the WAP are relative similar regionally, being close to −1.8°C.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Stability of Bacterial Communities in Antarctic Sponges

et al. 2019

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Marine sponges host dense, diverse, and species-specific microbial communities around the globe; however, most of the current knowledge is restricted to species from tropical and temperate waters. Only recently, some studies have assessed the microbiome of a few Antarctic sponges; however, contrary to low mid-latitude sponges, the knowledge about temporal (stability) patterns in the bacterial communities of Antarctic sponges is absent. Here, we studied the temporal patterns of bacterial communities in the Antarctic sponges Mycale (Oxymycale) acerata, Isodictya sp., Hymeniacidon torquata, and Tedania (Tedaniopsis) wellsae that were tagged in situ and monitored during three austral summers over a 24-month period. By using amplicon sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene we found that the microbiome differed between species. In general, bacterial communities were dominated by gammaproteobacterial OTUs; however, M. acerata showed the most distinct pattern, being dominated by a single betaproteobacterial OTU. The analysis at OTU level (defined at 97% sequence similarity) showed a highly stable bacterial community through time, despite the abnormal seawater temperatures (reaching 3°C) and rates of temperature increase of 0.15°C day–1 recorded in austral summer 2017. Sponges were characterized by a small core bacterial community that accounted for a high percentage of the abundance. Overall, no consistent changes in core OTU abundance were recorded for all studied species, confirming a high temporal stability of the microbiome. In addition, predicted functional pathway profiles showed that the most abundant pathways among all sponges belonged mostly to metabolism pathway groups (e.g., amino acid, carbohydrate, energy, and nucleotide). The predicted functional pathway patterns differed among the four sponge species. However, no clear temporal differences were detected supporting what was found in terms of the relatively stable composition of the bacterial communities.

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“…Increased snowfall on the Antarctic Peninsula has been linked to warming sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific ( Thomas et al, 2015 ; Thomas et al, 2017 ) and the warming of WAP mid-ocean depths (rather than the warming of air temperatures) has been proposed as the primary driver of glacier retreat (e.g., Cook et al, 2016 ). These changes highlight the complexity of environmental change occurring at the WAP and the need for high-resolution information on regional- to local-scale patterns of climate change, to address its implications for marine polar ecosystems (e.g., Clarke et al, 2007 ; Meredith, Stefels & Van Leeuwe, 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of local settings: within-year variability in seawater temperature at South Bay, Western Antarctic Peninsula

Cárdenas

González-Aravena

Santibáñez

2018

PeerJ

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The Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) has undergone significant changes in air and seawater temperatures during the last 50 years. Although highly stenotherm Antarctic organisms are expected to be severely affected by the increase of seawater temperature, high-resolution datasets of seawater temperature within coastal areas of the WAP (where diverse marine communities have been reported) are not commonly available. Here we report on within-year (2016–2017) variation in seawater temperature at three sites on Doumer Island, Palmer Archipelago, WAP. Within a year, Antarctic organisms in South Bay were exposed to water temperatures in excess of 2 °C for more than 25 days and 2.5 °C for more than 10 days. We recorded a temperature range between −1.7° to 3.0 °C. Warming of seawater temperature was 3.75 times faster after October 2016 than it was before October. Results from this study indicate that organisms at South Bay are already exposed to temperatures that are being used in experimental studies to evaluate physiological responses to thermal stress in WAP organisms. Continuous measurements of short to long-term variability in seawater temperature provides important information for parametrizing meaningful experimental treatments that aim to assess the local effects of environmental variation on Antarctic organisms under future climate scenarios.

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Marine studies at the western Antarctic Peninsula: Priorities, progress and prognosis

Cited by 23 publications

References 37 publications

Spatial patterns of continental shelf faunal community structure along the Western Antarctic Peninsula

Spatial patterns of continental shelf faunal community structure along the Western Antarctic Peninsula

Temporal Stability of Bacterial Communities in Antarctic Sponges

The importance of local settings: within-year variability in seawater temperature at South Bay, Western Antarctic Peninsula

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