Ecological biogeography of the terrestrial nematodes of victoria land, antarctica.

Byron Adams,Matthew Knox,Ross Virginia,Diana Wall,Emma Broos

doi:10.3897/zookeys.419.7180

Abstract

The terrestrial ecosystems of Victoria Land, Antarctica are characteristically simple in terms of biological diversity and ecological functioning. Nematodes are the most commonly encountered and abundant metazoans of Victoria Land soils, yet little is known of their diversity and distribution. Herein we present a summary of the geographic distribution, habitats and ecology of the terrestrial nematodes of Victoria Land from published and unpublished sources. All Victoria Land nematodes are endemic to Antarctica, and many are common and widely distributed at landscape scales. However, at smaller spatial scales, populations can have patchy distributions, with the presence or absence of each species strongly influenced by specific habitat requirements. As the frequency of nematode introductions to Antarctica increases, and soil habitats are altered in response to climate change, our current understanding of the environmental parameters associated with the biogeography of Antarctic nematofauna will be crucial to monitoring and possibly mitigating changes to these unique soil ecosystems.

Highlights

Understanding the global distribution of biodiversity is critical for studying the evolution, ecology and dynamics of ecosystems and to address how global scale changes in climate, invasive species, and land use will affect ecosystems, ecosystem services, and subsequently, people
We report on findings of these studies through 2004 which captures most of the biodiversity information gathered by this research group, whereas more recent research has focused on nematode species response to climate change and soil resource manipulations (Ayres et al 2010; Doran et al 2002; Simmons et al 2009)
Five genera of terrestrial nematodes are recorded from Victoria Land Antarctica: Scottnema, Plectus, Eudorylaimus, Panagrolaimus, and Geomonhystera

Summary

Introduction

Understanding the global distribution of biodiversity is critical for studying the evolution, ecology and dynamics of ecosystems and to address how global scale changes in climate, invasive species, and land use will affect ecosystems, ecosystem services, and subsequently, people. Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems might seem less sensitive to global change because this polar desert has low species diversity distributed across a limited area of biologically active ice-free land, comprising less than 0.32% of the continent’s 14 million km (Chown and Convey 2007). The low species diversity of Antarctic soils makes them uniquely suited for studying the relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and identifying how global changes may affect species level changes in biodiversity, community composition and distribution (Barrett et al 2008; Simmons et al 2009). Manage and sustain ecosystem functioning in Antarctic and Earth’s other low diversity terrestrial environments will rely on knowledge of species diversity, distributions, and their role in ecosystem processes (Adams et al 2006; Barrett et al 2008; Wall 2004)

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