Abstract
In recent years, remote exploration around the Scotia Arc and waters off the Antarctic Peninsula yielded new records of Lithodidae suggesting our knowledge on their distribution is biased by our ability to sample areas with difficult access. In the present study, we used molecular methods to identify and report the occurrence of the deep-sea king crab Lithodes couesi, so far reported as a North Pacific lithodid, in the marine protected area (MPA) Namuncurá/Burdwood Bank II, Southwestern Atlantic Ocean; more than 10,000 km away from its known distribution. Our finding suggests that the distributions of deep-water lithodid species are more extensive than they have been previously thought. We emphasize the need for a worldwide key to identify lithodid species, and prompt to barcoding specimens, at least those from poorly known species or remote locations, in order to corroborate their specific status. Finally, our study stresses the importance of MPAs in the conservation of biodiversity, as well as the processes involved in its evolution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Anosov SE, Spiridonov VA, Neretina TV, Uryupova EF, Schepetov D (2015) King crabs of the western Atlantic sector of Antarctic and adjacent areas: new records, molecular barcode data and distribution (Crustacea: Decapoda: Lithodidae). Polar Biol 38:231–249
Arkhipkin AI, Laptikhovsky VV, Brickle P (2010) An antipodal link between the North Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans? Deep-Sea Res Part I 57:1009–1011
Bandelt H-J, Forster P, Röhl A (1999) Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. Mol Biol Evol 16:37–48
Benedict JE (1895) Descriptions of new genera and species of crabs of the family Lithodidae, with notes on the young of Lithodes camtschaticus and Lithodes brevipes. Proc of the US Natl Mus XVII:479–488
Folmer M, Black M, Hoeh W, Lutz R, Vrijenhoek R (1994) DNA primers for amplification of mitochondrial Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from diverse metazoan invertebrates. Mol Mar Biol Biotechnol 3:294–299
García Raso JE, Manjón-Cabeza ME, Ramos A, Olaso I (2005) New record of Lithodidae (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura) from the Antarctic (Bellingshausen Sea). Polar Biol 28:642–646
Guindon S, Gascuel O (2003) A simple, fast, and accurate algorithm to estimate large phylogenies by maximum likelihood. Syst Biol 52:696–704
Hall TA (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucl Acids Symp Ser 41:95–98
Hall S, Thatje S (2009) Global bottlenecks in the distribution of marine Crustacea: temperature constraints in the family Lithodidae. J Biogeogr 36:2125–2135
Jewett SC, Sloan NA, Somerton DA (1985) Size at sexual maturity and fecundity of the fjord-dwelling golden king crab Lithodes aequispina Benedict from northern British Columbia. J Crust Biol 5:377–385
Laptikhovsky V, Gaither MR, Black A (2013) A Pacific grenadier Coryphaenoides acrolepis in the south-west Atlantic and environmental changes in the Falkland deep seas. Mar Biodivers Rec 6:1–5
Lovrich GA (1999) Seasonality of larvae of Brachyura and Anomura (Crustacea Decapoda) in the Beagle Channel, Argentina. Sci Mar 63:347–354
Macpherson E (1988) Revision of the family Lithodidae Samouelle, 1819 (Crustacea, Decapoda, Anomura) in the Atlantic Ocean. Monografías de Zoología Marina 2:9–153
Olguín N, Ocampo EH, Farías NE (2015) New record of Paralomis spinosissima Birstein & Vinogradov (Decapoda: Anomura: Lithodidae) from Mar del Plata, Argentina. Zootaxa 3957:239–242
Posada D (2008) jModelTest: phylogenetic model averaging. Mol Biol Evol 25:1253–1256
Reiss RA, Schwert DP, Ashworth AC (1995) Field preservation of Coleoptera for molecular genetics analyses. Environ Entomol 24:716–719
Ronquist F, Huelsenbeck JP (2003) MRBAYES 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinform 19:1572–1574
Schejter L, Rimondino CM, Chiesa IL, Díaz de Astarloa JM, Doti BL et al (2016) Namuncurá Marine Protected Area: an oceanic hot spot of benthic biodiversity at Burdwood Bank, Argentina. Polar Biol 39:2373–2386
Smith CR, Grange LJ, Honig DL, Naudts L, Huber B, Guidi L, Domack E (2012) A large population of king crabs in Palmer Deep on the west Antarctic Peninsula shelf and potential invasive impacts. Proc R Soc B 279:1017–1026
Somerton DA (1981) Contribution to the life history of the deep-sea king crab, Lithodes couesi, in the Gulf of Alaska. Fish Bull 79:259–269
Spivak ED, Farías NE, Ocampo EH, Lovrich GA, Luppi TA (2019) Annotated catalogue and bibliography of marine and estuarine shrimps, lobsters, crabs and their allies (Crustacea: Decapoda) of Argentina and Uruguay (Southwestern Atlantic Ocean). Frente Marítimo 26:1–178
Stevens B, Lovrich GA (2014) King crabs of the world: species and distributions. In: Stevens B (ed) King crabs of the world: biology and fisheries management. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 1–29
Tapella F, Sotelano MP, Romero MC, Lovrich GA (2012) Experimental natural substrate preference of southern king crab Lithodes santolla larvae. J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 411:70–77
Thatje S, Hall S, Hauton C, Held C, Tyler P (2008) Encounter of lithodid crab Paralomis birsteini on the continental slope off Antarctica, sampled by ROV. Polar Biol 31:1143–1148
Zaklan SD (2002) Review of the family Lithodidae (Crustacea: Anomura: Paguroidea): distribution, biology, and fisheries. In: Paul AJ, Dawe G, Elner RW, Jamieson G, Kruse GH, Otto RS, Sainte-Marie B, Shirley TC, Woodby D (eds) Crabs in cold water regions: biology, management, and economics. University of Alaska Sea Grant College Program, Fairbanks, pp 751–845
Acknowledgements
We greatly appreciate the help of the crew and captain of the April 2016 Expedition of RV Puerto Deseado to the Burdwood Bank, and Enrique Macpherson for his comments on a preliminary version of this manuscript. Samples were obtained through funds of the National Law Nº 26875 and this work is the contribution Nº 27 of the Marine Protected Area Namuncurá/Burdwood Bank. This study was funded by CONICET, FONCyT (PICT 16-0142), Universidad Maimónides and Fundación de Historia Natural Félix de Azara.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pérez-Barros, P., Albano, M., Diez, M.J. et al. Pole to pole: the deep-sea king crab Lithodes couesi (Decapoda: Lithodidae) in the Burdwood Bank, Southwestern Atlantic Ocean. Polar Biol 43, 81–86 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-019-02609-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-019-02609-x