Biological and chemical diversity in Antarctica: from new species to new natural products

• Published in: Biodiversity
• Main Author: Avila, Conxita
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2016
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/37324/; https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/37324/1/Avila.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1080/14888386.2016.1176957

Antarctica is a still unexplored area in many respects, among which biological diversity and, even more so, chemical diversity are important challenges. Over recent years, our research group has been studying marine benthic ecosystems in different Antarctic areas. These studies yielded several interesting discoveries, including species new to science, as well as new natural products never seen before. Overall, we have been trying to unravel the complex network of interactions that exist between marine benthic organisms in these cold and hardly accessible ecosystems. We present here an overview of our recent results regarding the biological and the chemical diversity of these organisms. In fact, these ecosystems are as complex as many other marine environments on the planet, and indeed, many questions remain yet to be answered.