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Description of intertidal macro- and meiobenthic assemblages in Maxwell Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Islands, Southern Ocean

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Abstract

The intertidal benthic fauna of the Antarctic coastal areas is largely unknown and has long been thought to be absent or, at most, to be scarce. Since climate changes cause a progressive expansion of ice-free intertidal soft-bottom areas, the fauna of these areas could serve as essential criterion to evaluate the kind and dimension of such changes. We therefore investigated the faunal composition of the intertidal soft-bottom area of Maxwell Bay (King George Island, South Shetlands) in December 2006. Samples for quantitative analyses were taken from the soft-bottom during low tide using a plastic corer. We performed detailed analyses of the soft-bottom beneath a cobble layer, while hard-bottom and macrophytes were only sporadically investigated. Approximately 5,000 specimens were collected of which polychaetes (37.3 ± 7.6 (max. 44.7) ind. × 100 cm−³) and harpacticoids (28.9 ± 28.5 (max. 104.0) ind. × 10 cm−³) were the most abundant macro- and meiofauna taxa of the soft-bottom, followed by oligochaetes, nematodes, mollusks, and amphipods. A total of 58 macrofauna species were registered, of which 27 were identified only to a supraspecific level. The most species-rich macrofauna taxon was polychaetes with at least 24 species, followed by amphipods, gastropods, and oligochaetes with 6 species each. The harpacticoid copepods were represented by 15 families with more than 30 species. In summary, we show that the Antarctic intertidal soft-bottom is densely populated by macro- and meiofauna and that it deserves closer attention in the future to determine whether it can indeed serve as an indicator of the effect of climate changes on the Antarctic coastal areas.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the staff and the head Oleg Sakharov of the Russian Antarctic Station ‘Bellingshausen’ for logistical support. We are indebted to the following colleagues for their assistance in identification of the organisms: Hans Georg Andres for Amphipoda, Claudia Arango for Pygnogonida, Angelika Brandt for Isopoda, Christer Erséus for Oligochaeta, Flavio Dias Passos for Bivalvia, and Enrico Schwabe for Gastropoda. Many thanks are due to AG Zoosystematics and Morphology, University of Oldenburg, who let the Taxonomic Harpacticoida Archives Oldenburg at our disposal. We would also like to thank Karin Meißner who carried out the PCA analysis. We are obliged to Judith Staerk for scientific English copyediting. We thank the comments of Dieter Piepenburg and three anonymous referees that greatly improved the paper.

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  1. Institut für Biowissenschaften, Allgemeine und Spezielle Zoologie, Universität Rostock, Universitätsplatz 2, 18055, Rostock, Germany

    Andreas Bick

  2. Institut für Biowissenschaften, Meeresbiologie, Universität Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 3, 1855, Rostock, Germany

    Günter Arlt

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Bick, A., Arlt, G. Description of intertidal macro- and meiobenthic assemblages in Maxwell Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Islands, Southern Ocean. Polar Biol 36, 673–689 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-013-1293-9

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