Species composition of scavenging amphipods (Crustacea: Lysianassoidea) in a rapidly changing environment (Potter Cove, King George Island, South Shetland Islands) revealed by DNA barcodes and morphology

SEEFELDT, MEIKE ANNA; WEIGAND, ALEXANDER M.; HAVERMANS, CHARLOTTE; MOREIRA, E.; HELD, CHRISTOPH

Leuven

Simposio; XIIth SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) biology symposium; 2017

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The crustacean amphipod superfamily Lysianassoidea plays an important role in Southern Ocean benthic food webs due to high biomass and abundance and their predominantly scavenging mode of feeding. However, their poorly differentiated morphology and their unsolved phylogenetic relationships impede our understanding of the lysianassoid fauna even in well-studied areas of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Accurate species inventories, however, are essential for a multitude of downstream analyses in the context of ecology and biodiversity such as food web modelling and the detection of community shifts. This particularly holds true in areas highly affected by climate-driven environmental changes such as King George Island (KGI) where a remarkably retreat of the ice cap is detected since decades (Rückamp et al. 2011). In Potter Cove (KGI) calving events of the tidewater glacier (Fourcade Glacier) and its consequences such as freshwater runoff and high sedimentation has already led to shifts in biotic communities and their dynamics (e.g. Quartino et al. 2013; Pasotti et al. 2014; Schloss et al. 2014; Sahade et al. 2015; Fuentes et al. 2016). Here, we report the first inventory of the scavenging amphipod guild of Potter Cove using an integrative approach combining morphological and molecular species identification (COI barcoding) methods of more than 41,000 specimens from baited traps. For comparison, 2039 specimens from adjacent Marian Cove were analysed. Ten lysianassoid species were recorded in the deeper outer Potter Cove whereas the inner cove (