Understanding the link between sea ice, ice scour and Antarctic benthic biodiversity?the need for cross-station and international collaboration

DOLORES DEREGIBUS; MARIA LILIANA QUARTINO; KATHARINA ZACHER; GABRIELA LAURA CAMPANA; DAVID DKA BARNES

POLAR RECORD

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Año: 2017 p. 1 - 10

0032-2474

The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a hotspot of recent, rapid, regional ?climate change? resulting in temperature, sea-ice and ice-scouring changes. The WAP shallows are ideal for studying biological response to physical change because most known Antarctic species are benthic, physical change occurs mainly in the shallows, and most research stations are coastal. Studies at Rothera Station have found increased benthic disturbance with losses of winter sea-ice, and assemblage level changes coincident with this ice-scouring. Such measures are difficult to scale-up as they depend on SCUBA - a very spatially limited technique. Here we report attempts to broaden the understanding of benthic ecosystem responses to physical change by replicating the Rothera experimental grids at Carlini station through collaboration between UK, Argentina and Germany across Signy, Rothera and Carlini stations. We argue that such collaborations are the way forward towards understanding the big picture of biota responses to physical climate changes.