Zoogeography
Abstract The bryozoan collections of the Belgica Expedition were the first strictly Antarctic samples to be made available for specialist study. Their importance was fully appreciated by A.W. Waters (1904), who considered that they demonstrated the existence of a highly distinctive Antarctic fauna t...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressOxford
1995
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198548911.003.0004 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52530956/isbn-9780198548911-book-part-4.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract The bryozoan collections of the Belgica Expedition were the first strictly Antarctic samples to be made available for specialist study. Their importance was fully appreciated by A.W. Waters (1904), who considered that they demonstrated the existence of a highly distinctive Antarctic fauna that would prove to be very much more diverse than these first collections showed. In his discussion of geographical distributions Waters (1904) brusquely disposed of the bipolar theory of distribution, applied to Bryozoa by Pfeffer (1890), and remarked that Pfeffer’s material consisted of just 18 species, of Subantarctic rather than Antarctic origin, which were anyway probably incorrectly identified. The first systematic treatment of Antarctic bryozoan distribution patterns was that of Hastings (1943), who carefully distinguished between the Antarctic and Subantarctic realms, and assigned the islands of the Southern Ocean to one or other of the two on hydrological and faunistic grounds. She tabulated the distribution of 60 species and varieties of (mostly) Buguloidea represented in the Discovery collections, including 17 that had occurred only at abyssal depths. Only seven of these taxa were collected from both Antarctic and Subantarctic localities, and of these only Caberea darwinii achieved a wide geographical distribution in both realms. Hastings (1943) noted the faunal similarities between the deep outer Patagonian Shelf and the Antarctic peninsula, which appeared to support one prevalent view for the origins of the Antarctic fauna as a whole. Another opinion, that the Antarctic fauna arose through the immigration of ancestral stocks from abyssal habitats (Levinsen 1917), was not favoured by the Discovery results. |
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