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Biodiversity of a Unique Environment: The Southern Ocean Benthos Shaped and Threatened by Climate Change

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Biodiversity Hotspots

Abstract

Over millions of years, plate tectonics, palaeoceanography and the resulting changes in the global climate (greenhouse to icehouse) have impacted the Southern Ocean marine fauna and flora, caused evolutionary extinctions and radiation of benthic marine invertebrates, and led to the present biodiversity. Simultaneous biogeographical events happening were the progressive retraction of cosmopolitan taxa established during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods when Antarctica was still under greenhouse conditions. The disjunctive distribution patterns resulted from vicariance due to the disintegration of the supercontinent Gondwana. Active migration of taxa in and out of the SO (depending on dispersal capabilities) caused a change in biodiversity composition of several invertebrate taxa over geological time scales including the period after the geomorphological isolation established. It is assumed that life on the seabed has not been completely erased at any time in the geologic past, although some taxa vanished while others thrived or radiated. Nowadays, natural and anthropogenically driven climate change processes shape the Southern Ocean marine fauna and we can only anticipate the threat associated with these changes because the processes driving speciation as well as biodiversity changes are not fully understood yet.

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Acknowledgements

The first author is grateful to Drs. J. Habel and F. Zachos for the invitation to the symposium on biodiversity hotpots and for the invitation to submit an article to the current book. Martin Rauschert and Torben Riehl are thanked for images of peracarid crustaceans, and Dr. S. Kaiser for discussions and helpful comments. The English has kindly been checked, corrected and improved by Helen Codon and Elisabeth Donnellan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biocentre Grindel and Zoological Museum, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Angelika Brandt

  2. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Columbusstr, 27568, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Julian Gutt

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  1. Angelika Brandt
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Correspondence to Angelika Brandt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Mammal Collection, Natural History Museum Vienna, Burgring 7, Vienna, 1010, Austria

    Frank E. Zachos

  2. Naturelle, Luxembourg, Musée National de Histoire, rue Münster 25, Luxembourg, 2106, Luxembourg

    Jan Christian Habel

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Brandt, A., Gutt, J. (2011). Biodiversity of a Unique Environment: The Southern Ocean Benthos Shaped and Threatened by Climate Change. In: Zachos, F., Habel, J. (eds) Biodiversity Hotspots. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_25

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