Trends in Antarctic ecological research in Latin America shown by publications in international journals

• Published in: Polar Research
• Main Authors: Gisela C. Stotz, Cristian Salgado-Luarte, Rodrigo S. Rios, Ian S. Acuña-Rodriguez, Fernando Carrasco-Urra, Marco A. Molina-Montenegro, Ernesto Gianoli
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Norwegian Polar Institute 2013
• Subjects: Antarctica; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; research trends; scientific productivity; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Oceanography; GC1-1581; Antarctic; Isi; Antarc*; Polar Research
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3402/polar.v32i0.19993; https://doaj.org/article/82ea5e0396ae40ef8bcc3d4d1ce8af66

Antarctica is a highly interesting region for ecologists because of its extreme climatic conditions and the uniqueness of its species. In this article, we describe the trends in Antarctic ecological research participation by Latin American countries. In a survey of articles indexed by the ISI Web of Science, we searched under the categories “Ecology,” “Biodiversity Conservation” and “Evolutionary Biology” and found a total of 254 research articles published by Latin American countries. We classified these articles according to the country of affiliation, kingdom of the study species, level of biological organization and environment. Our main finding is that there is a steady increase in the relative contribution of Latin American countries to Antarctic ecological research. Within each category, we found that marine studies are more common than terrestrial studies. Between the different kingdoms, most studies focus on animals and most studies use a community approach. The leading countries in terms of productivity were Argentina, Chile and Brazil, with Argentina showing the highest rate of increase.