Comparison of seastar (Asteroidea) fauna across island groups of the Scotia Arc
The Antarctic shelf fauna is isolated from other continental shelf faunas both physically by distance, and oceanographically by the Antarctic circumpolar current (ACC). To elucidate the relative importance of these two isolating mechanisms, we used the seastar fauna of the south-Atlantic sub-Antarct...
| Published in: | Polar Biology |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2007
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1834/17104 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-006-0198-2 |
| Summary: | The Antarctic shelf fauna is isolated from other continental shelf faunas both physically by distance, and oceanographically by the Antarctic circumpolar current (ACC). To elucidate the relative importance of these two isolating mechanisms, we used the seastar fauna of the south-Atlantic sub-Antarctic islands to address the hypothesis that the ACC is dominant in controlling the distribution pattern of Antarctic fauna. We expected that seastar faunas from islands on the high latitude side of the ACC would show more similarities to each other than to faunas from islands on the low latitude side. The alternative isolation by distance model predicted that the island furthest from others would have the most unique fauna. For shelf-depth (<500 m) Asteroidea of the Scotia Arc region, assemblages were more similar between islands on each side of the ACC barrier than islands that were closer together, and this pattern was caused by differences in abundance of a few ubiquitous species Published |
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