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Antarctic reptant decapods: more than a myth?

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Abstract

The impoverished Antarctic decapod fauna is one of the most conspicuous biodiversity phenomena in polar science. Although physiological and ecological approaches have tried to explain the reason for the low decapod biodiversity pattern in the Southern Ocean, the complexity of this problem is still not completely understood. The scant records of crabs south of the Polar Front were always considered as exceptional, and have mostly been ignored by marine biologists world-wide, creating one of the most dogmatic paradigms in polar science. We herein review the record of both adults and larvae of reptants from the Southern Ocean. At present, several species of only lithodid crabs maintain considerable adult populations in circum-Antarctic waters, although they remain absent from the high-Antarctic shelves.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks are due to Ingo Fetzer (AWI) for help with translating the original Russian literature. We are grateful to Anne-Nina Lörz (NIWA, Wellington) and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, P.O. Box 120 161, 27515, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Sven Thatje & Wolf E. Arntz

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  1. Sven Thatje
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  2. Wolf E. Arntz
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Correspondence to Sven Thatje.

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Thatje, S., Arntz, W.E. Antarctic reptant decapods: more than a myth?. Polar Biol 27, 195–201 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-003-0583-z

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