Meiofauna as a valuable bioindicator of climate change in the polar regions

Leasi, Francesca; Sevigny, Joseph L.; Hassett, Brandon T.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107133

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…However, as suggested by Pasotti et al [74], comparisons of abundance data are often impaired by the use of different sampling methods or mesh size sieves, applied during the meiobenthic sampling routine or separation process. Nematodes and copepods (adults and nauplii) were the most abundant taxa in our data set; besides those two, Ciliata, Gastrotricha, and Platyhelminthes showed relevant abundances and were regularly documented among the prevalent taxa in many polar expeditions [2,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. The statistical analysis did not reveal clear effects of anthropogenic or natural impacts or depth gradient on the meiobenthic richness; however, a significantly higher number of taxa at the station AI50 was detected, suggesting that human influence is minimal at the deeper stations.…”

Section: Meiobenthic Assemblage Structurementioning

confidence: 86%

Antarctic Special Protected Area 161 as a Reference to Assess the Effects of Anthropogenic and Natural Impacts on Meiobenthic Assemblages

et al. 2021

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The Antarctic region is usually considered a pristine area. Nevertheless, regional warming effects and increasing human activities, including the presence of several research stations, are inducing considerable environmental changes that may affect the ecosystem’s functions. Therefore, during the XXXIII Antarctic expedition, we carried out an investigation in Terra Nova bay (Ross Sea), close to the Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) n.161. In particular, we compared the effects of two different types of impacts on the meiobenthic assemblages: anthropogenic impact (AI), associated with the activity of Mario Zucchelli Research Station (MZS), and natural impact (NI) attributable to a large colony of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) in Adelie Cove. For each impacted site, a respective control site and two sampling depths (20 and 50 m) were selected. Several environmental variables (pH, dissolved oxygen, major and minor ions, heavy metals, organic load, and sediment grain size) were measured and analysed, to allow a comprehensive characterization of the sampling areas. According to the criteria defined by Unites States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA 2009), heavy metal concentrations did not reveal critical conditions. However, both the MZS (AI20) and penguin colony (NI20) sites showed higher heavy metal concentrations, the former due to human activities related to the Italian research station, with the latter caused by the penguins excrements. Meiobenthic richness and abundance values suggested that the worst ecological condition was consistently related to the Adélie penguins colony. Furthermore, the higher contribution of r-strategists corroborates the hypothesis that the chronic impact of the penguin colonies may have stronger effects on the meiobenthos than the human activities at the MZS. Food is not limited in shallow Antarctic bottoms, and microscale differences in primary and secondary production processes can likely explain the greater spatial heterogeneity, highlighted both by the univariate and multivariate attributes of meiobenthic assemblage (i.e., richness, diversity, abundance, whole structure assemblage, and rare taxa) at the deeper stations. As reported in other geographical regions, the assemblage structure of rare meiobenthic taxa is confirmed to be more susceptible to environmental variations, rather than the whole assemblage structure.

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Section: Meiobenthic Assemblage Structurementioning

confidence: 86%

Antarctic Special Protected Area 161 as a Reference to Assess the Effects of Anthropogenic and Natural Impacts on Meiobenthic Assemblages

et al. 2021

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“…Sympagic meiofauna species are often found in higher concentrations within the ice than in the pelagic or benthic zones (Carey and Montagna 1982;Grainger 1991;Bluhm et al 2017), meaning that losing ice cover could have a disproportionate impact even if the same taxa are found in other habitats. Losses and reductions of sea ice meiofauna have already been reported due to changes in ice dynamics (Melnikov et al 2001;Kiko et al 2017;Leasi et al 2021). A rich sea ice community contributes to strong sympagic-pelagic and sympagic-benthic coupling in the Arctic Ocean through processes, such as the vertical pump (Søreide 2013;Wiedmann et al 2020), where the sinking of small invertebrates and algae out of the ice bring energy and nutrients from the surface toward the sea floor.…”

Section: Habitat Occurrence and Portion Of Life Cycle Spent Within Se...mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A rich sea ice community contributes to strong sympagic-pelagic and sympagic-benthic coupling in the Arctic Ocean through processes, such as the vertical pump (Søreide 2013;Wiedmann et al 2020), where the sinking of small invertebrates and algae out of the ice bring energy and nutrients from the surface toward the sea floor. Therefore, losses in diversity and abundance of ice meiofauna and the larger sea ice community due to habitat loss will not only impact sympagic food webs, but also pelagic and benthic ones if fewer meiofauna melt out of sea ice in the spring (Leasi et al 2021).…”

Section: Habitat Occurrence and Portion Of Life Cycle Spent Within Se...mentioning

confidence: 99%

First trait-based characterization of Arctic ice meiofauna taxa

et al. 2022

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Trait-based approaches connect the traits of species to ecosystem functions to estimate the functional diversity of communities and how they may respond to environmental change. For the first time, we compiled a traits matrix across 11 traits for 28 species of Arctic ice meiofauna, including Copepoda (Subclass), Nematoda (Phylum), Acoela (Order), Rotifera (Phylum), and Cnidaria (Phylum). Over 50 years of pan-Arctic literature were manually reviewed, and trait categories were assigned to enable future trait–function connections within the threatened ice-associated ecosystem. Approximately two-thirds of the traits data were found at the genus or species level, ranging from 44% for Nematoda to 100% for Cnidaria. Ice meiofauna were shown to possess advantageous adaptations to the brine channel network within sea ice, including a majority with small body widths < 200 μm, high body flexibility, and high temperature and salinity tolerance. Diets were found to be diverse outside of the algal bloom season, with most organisms transitioning to ciliate-, omnivore-, or detritus-based diets. Eight species of the studied taxa have only been recorded within sea ice, while the rest are found in a mixture of sympagic–pelagic–benthic habitats. Twelve of the ice meiofauna species have been found with all life stages present in sea ice. Body width, temperature tolerance, and salinity tolerance were identified as traits with the largest research gaps and suffered from low-resolution taxonomic data. Overall, the compiled data show the degree to which ice meiofauna are adapted to spending all or portions of their lives within the ice.

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“…Benthic communities have only been characterized with sediment eDNA in Kongsfjorden (Svalbard) for NIS detection (van den Heuvel-Greve et al, 2021), and in the Beaufort Sea (Alaska, Barrow). In the latter study, DNA metabarcoding was used to investigate sea ice and sediment samples for metazoan diversity throughout winter, spring and summer (Leasi et al, 2021). The majority of the aforementioned studies were carried out in coastal or shore areas of the Arctic and Southern oceans.…”

Section: Prospects For Edna In a Changing Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Dna in an Ocean of Change: Status, Challenges and Prospects

Havermans¹,

Dischereit²,

Pantiukhin³

et al. 2022

ACMAR

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Environmental DNA (eDNA) studies have burgeoned over the last two decades and the application of eDNA has increased exponentially since 2010, albeit at a slower pace in the marine system. We provide a literature overview on marine metazoan eDNA studies and assess recent achievements in answering questions related to species distributions, biodiversity and biomass. We investigate which are the better studied taxonomic groups, geographic regions and the genetic markers used. We evaluate the use of eDNA for addressing ecological and environmental issues through food web, ecotoxicological, surveillance and management studies. Based on this state of the art, we highlight exciting prospects of eDNA for marine time series, population genetic studies, the use of natural sampler DNA, and eDNA data for building trophic networks and ecosystem models. We discuss the current limitations, in terms of marker choice and incompleteness of reference databases. We also present recent advances using experiments and modeling to better understand persistence, decay and dispersal of eDNA in coastal and oceanic systems. Finally, we explore promising avenues for marine eDNA research, including autonomous or passive eDNA sampling, as well as the combined applications of eDNA with different surveillance methods and further molecular advances. Keywords: environmental DNA, DNA metabarcoding, marine metazoa, biodiversity, population genetics, natural sampler DNA, diet analysis.

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Meiofauna as a valuable bioindicator of climate change in the polar regions

Cited by 16 publications

References 83 publications

Antarctic Special Protected Area 161 as a Reference to Assess the Effects of Anthropogenic and Natural Impacts on Meiobenthic Assemblages

Antarctic Special Protected Area 161 as a Reference to Assess the Effects of Anthropogenic and Natural Impacts on Meiobenthic Assemblages

First trait-based characterization of Arctic ice meiofauna taxa

Environmental Dna in an Ocean of Change: Status, Challenges and Prospects

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