New and previously known species of Copepoda and Cladocera (Crustacea) from Svalbard, Norway – who are they and where do they come from?

Abstract

Arctic landscapes are characterised by an immense number of fresh and brackish water habitats – lakes, ponds and puddles. Due to a rather harsh environment, there is a limited number of species inhabiting these ecosystems. Present biological communities are impacted and changed by recent climate-driven regime shifts. New species may appear, and existing communities may become supressed or even disappear depending on how their ecological needs interact with ongoing changes. This study provides data on presently existing and probably recently arriving fresh and brackish water microcrustacean species in Norwegian High Arctic - Svalbard archipelago. The study focused on two taxa groups, Cladocera and Copepoda and altogether we found seven taxa new for Svalbard: Alona werestschagini, Polyphemus pediculus, Diaptomus sp., Diacyclops abyssicola, Nitokra spinipes, Epactophanes richardi and Geeopsis incisipes. Compared with an existing overview for the area, our study increased the number of species by more than 20 %, and some of the new species have never been found that far north. Finally, we present a complete and critically updated revised species list of fresh and brackish water cladocerans and copepods for Svalbard.

Cladocera and Copepoda (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of the Lake Bolon and its basin (Far East of Russia)

“…This species is regarded to be widely distributed from the Arctic to subtropical latitudes [Rylov, 1948;Fefilova, 2015]. Two specimens were found in the River Simmy near Cheremshiniy Kordon and are similar to those found in more northern regions [Novichkova, Chertoprud, 2017;Dimante-Deimantovica et al, 2018].…”

Five decades of terrestrial and freshwater research at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard

“…Nematodes, tardigrades, ostracods and harpacticoid copepods dominate the meiofauna (Walseng et al 2018). An inventory of the freshwater invertebrate fauna in ponds in western Svalbard, including the Ny-Ålesund area, has recently become available (Chertoprud et al 2017;Dimante-Deimantovica et al 2018;Walseng et al 2018). However, broad taxonomic surveys have not been performed, and the few studies of freshwater micro-organisms have mainly focused on microscopy-based identification or isolation campaigns targeting functional groups (Kim et al 2008;Graef et al 2011;Kim et al 2011).…”

Mitochondrial Lineage Diversity and Phylogeography of Daphnia (Daphnia) (Crustacea: Cladocera) in North-East Russia

“…D. cristata, D. longiremis, D. middendorffiana and D. pulex are most common in the arctic-subarctic water bodies [14,22,23,73,78,79]. D. cucullata is detected in the Western Arctic only [80][81][82].…”