Description of intertidal macro- and meiobenthic assemblages in Maxwell Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Islands,
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Description of intertidal macro- and meiobenthic assemblages in Maxwell Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Islands, Southern Ocean Andreas Bick • Gu¨nter Arlt
Received: 7 September 2012 / Revised: 4 December 2012 / Accepted: 11 January 2013 / Published online: 2 February 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract The intertidal benthic fauna of the Antarctic coastal areas is largely unknown and has long been thought to be absent or, at most, to be scarce. Since climate changes cause a progressive expansion of ice-free intertidal softbottom areas, the fauna of these areas could serve as essential criterion to evaluate the kind and dimension of such changes. We therefore investigated the faunal composition of the intertidal soft-bottom area of Maxwell Bay (King George Island, South Shetlands) in December 2006. Samples for quantitative analyses were taken from the softbottom during low tide using a plastic corer. We performed detailed analyses of the soft-bottom beneath a cobble layer, while hard-bottom and macrophytes were only sporadically investigated. Approximately 5,000 specimens were collected of which polychaetes (37.3 ± 7.6 (max. 44.7) ind. 9 100 cm-3) and harpacticoids (28.9 ± 28.5 (max. 104.0) ind. 9 10 cm-3) were the most abundant macroand meiofauna taxa of the soft-bottom, followed by oligochaetes, nematodes, mollusks, and amphipods. A total of 58 macrofauna species were registered, of which 27 were identified only to a supraspecific level. The most speciesrich macrofauna taxon was polychaetes with at least 24 species, followed by amphipods, gastropods, and oligochaetes with 6 species each. The harpacticoid copepods were represented by 15 families with more than 30 species.
A. Bick (&) Institut fu¨r Biowissenschaften, Allgemeine und Spezielle Zoologie, Universita¨t Rostock, Universita¨tsplatz 2, 18055 Rostock, Germany e-mail: [email protected] G. Arlt Institut fu¨r Biowissenschaften, Meeresbiologie, Universita¨t Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 3, 1855 Rostock, Germany
In summary, we show that the Antarctic intertidal softbottom is densely populated by macro- and meiofauna and that it deserves closer attention in the future to determine whether it can indeed serve as an indicator of the effect of climate changes on the Antarctic coastal areas. Keywords Antarctica Boulder pavement Demographic analyses Diversity Harpacticoida Polychaeta Soft-bottom
Introduction The prevalence of ice cover, the abrasive action of ice floes or ice foot, and the reduction of incoming solar radiation during the polar winter has led to the assumption that the Antarctic intertidal fauna is scarce or even absent (e.g., Knox 1960; Arntz et al. 1994). Seasonal changes of salinity caused by the summer ice melt and runoff with terrestrial sediments as well as high UV irradiation in the austral summer are thought to be additional reasons for the poorly populated intertidal habitats in Polar Regions (Smith and Simpson 2002). Moreover, factors such as heavy wave action, extreme diur
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