Distribution of the genus Boeckella (Crustacea, Copepoda, Calanoida, Centropagidae) at high latitudes in South America and the main Antarctic biogeographic regions.

Claudia S Maturana,Elie Poulin,Peter Convey,Sebastián Rosenfeld,Javier Naretto

doi:10.3897/zookeys.854.29614

Abstract

Copepods are present in numerous aquatic environments, playing key roles in food webs, and are thought to be useful indicators of environmental change. Boeckella is a calanoid copepod genus distributed mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, with 14 species reported at higher southern latitudes in South America and Antarctica. We present an updated database of these 14 species of Boeckella generated from a combination of three sources: 1) new field sampling data, 2) published records, and 3) Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), to provide a comprehensive description of the geographic distribution of the genus south of latitude 40°S in southern South America and the three main terrestrial biogeographic regions of Antarctica. The database includes 380 records, 62 from field sampling, 278 from the literature and 40 from GBIF. Southern South America, including the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, had the highest species richness and number of records (14 and 297, respectively), followed by the sub-Antarctic islands (5 and 34), South Orkney Islands (2 and 14), South Shetland Islands (1 and 23), Antarctic Peninsula (1 and 10) and finally continental Antarctica (1 and 2). Boeckellapoppei Mrázek, 1901 is the only representative of the genus, and more widely the only terrestrial/freshwater invertebrate, currently reported from all three main biogeographic regions in Antarctica (sub-Antarctic islands, maritime and continental Antarctic). Future development of molecular systematic studies in this group should contribute to assessing the correspondence between morphological taxonomy and molecular evolutionary radiation.

Highlights

Knowledge of the diversity and distribution of organisms over space and time can provide information about changes in the composition of communities in different environments, in sensitive ecosystems such as those in freshwater
The present compilation and classification of Boeckella records represents a contribution to biodiversity knowledge and to the biogeographic distribution of members of the genus across three large-scale biogeographic regions in Antarctica and two ecoregions in southern South America
It is appropriate to note here that recent research has recognized that the long-used three region classification of Antarctic terrestrial biogeographic regions does not expresses the full regional complexity of terrestrial biogeography in Antarctica, with 16 “Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions” recognized within the continent, five of which are contained in the maritime Antarctic as considered in the current study (Terauds et al 2012; Terauds and Lee 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge of the diversity and distribution of organisms over space and time can provide information about changes in the composition of communities in different environments, in sensitive ecosystems such as those in freshwater. Copepods are thought to be one of the most abundant metazoan groups in the world (Huys and Boxshall 1991), colonizing virtually all aquatic habitats (Bayly and Boxshall 2009) from the deepest ocean abyss (Bradford-Grieve 2004) to high mountain lakes in the Himalayas (Sommaruga 2010) and Andes (Zagarese et al 1997), and from hydrothermal springs (Ivanenko 2006; Ivanenko and Defaye 2006) to the frozen lakes of Antarctica (Bayly et al 2003; Convey et al 2008) They play fundamental ecological roles, being key components of food webs in both marine and freshwater ecosystems, and in some cases being recognized as useful indicators of environmental change (Gerten and Adrian 2002; Hays et al 2005). Most studies to date have focused on marine copepods

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