Tag: Biogeography

The RAATD workshop

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This week, Bruno Danis is attending the fourth RAATD workshop, hosted at the CESAB (Center for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity), in Aix-en-Provence. 10 participants from 7 countries are attending the meeting.

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a multispecies assessment of habitat use of Antarctic meso- and top predators in the Southern Ocean based on existing animal tracking data to identify Areas of Ecological Significance, i.e. regions that are important for foraging to a range of predators and which, consequently, present an important biodiversity. RAATD was initiated by the SCAR Expert Group on Birds and Marine Mammals (EG-BAMM), and provides (i) a greater understanding of fundamental ecosystem processes in the Southern Ocean, (ii) facilitate future projections of predator distributions under varying climate regimes, and (iii) provide input into spatial management planning decisions for management authorities such as the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The synopsis of multi-predator tracking data will also expose potential gaps of data coverage in regions or seasons that are important but underrepresented, possibly due to biases in the spatial, temporal, or taxonomic distribution of research effort. We have collated all available tracking data by research groups that worked in the Antarctic since the 1990s. We have then establish a preliminary publicly accessible repository of these data. The final publicly available repository will only have the raw data that data holders have agreed to share and will contain data from almost 40 contributors from 12 national Antarctic programs. The dataset contains data on 17 predator species, with more than 3400 individual animals, and more than 2.5 million data points. We will also share the outputs of the project, including filtered and processed versions of these data, and habitat model outputs.

 

Camille is off to the ACE Expedition

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This season 2017, Camille Moreau, PhD student at the Universities of Brussels (ULB) and Dijon, is joining a major Swiss-led research expedition circum-navigating the Antarctic: the ACE (Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition).

In the framework of his PhD project, Camille will take part as a member of the ASCCC (Antarctic Seabed Carbon Capture Change) team gathering scientists from master students to senior scientists. Their research will investigate the importance of sea bed animals in carbon cycling and how climate change will impact these processes in the Southern Ocean.

The project is led by David Barnes, a marine biologist at the British Antarctic Survey and zoology/ecology professor at the University of Cambridge. He took part in the first leg of the expedition, from Cape Town to Hobart. Camille will join the team in Hobart, Tasmania for the second leg of the expedition, a which will take the ship to Punta Arenas, Chile. The team will have the opportunity to visit rarely studied sub-Antarctic islands (Macquarie, Balleny, Scott, Peter the 1st and Diego Ramirez). They will also carry on researches around the Mertz Glacier in Antarctica.

Collection of benthic organisms using a trawl, investigation of marine debris ashore and use of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) will organise their daily life for the next few weeks.

For more information regarding the expedition and the ASCCC project follow this link or follow their progress on twitter @ACE_Expedition and @asccc_news.

Un coup d’oeil a la biodiversite des fonds marins Antarctiques

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Que faisons-nous?

Nous sommes à bord du JCR, le James Clark Ross, un navire de recherche océanographique Britannique, qui doit son nom à un explorateur polaire Anglais.

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Le James Clark Ross, a Signy Island. Photo: Bruno Danis

Le but de notre mission est de faire un inventaire, une liste, de tous les animaux qui vivent au fond de la mer (on les appelle les animaux benthiques), dans la région des Orcades du Sud. Ces îles se trouvent entre l’Amérique du Sud et la Péninsule Antarctique, et nous pensons que leur biodiversité doit être protégée. Pour cela, il est important de répertorier tous les animaux qui s’y trouvent (et beaucoup n’ont pas encore été décris), avec comme idée de pouvoir revenir plus tard pour un nouvel inventaire, qui permettra de déceler des changements dûs aux changements de l’environnement.

Comment faisons-nous?

Nous sommes dans une région qui a été relativement peu explorée. La seule manière d’inventorier les animaux qui nous intéresse est de les remonter à la surface. Nous utilisons pour cela des engins semblables à ceux qui sont utilisés par les pêcheurs, mais beaucoup plus petits, pour éviter d’abîmer les fonds. Nous utilisons notamment un AGT (Agassiz Trawl – Chalut Agassiz, du nom de son inventeur) et un traîneau EBS (Epibenthic sledge), qui permet de récolter les animaux qui sont près du fond. Avant de lancer les engins de récolte, nous “scannons” le fond, à l’aide d’un SWATH (qui permet d’avoir une image 3D du fond, très précise), qui fonctionne sur le principe de l’écholocalisation, comme les dauphins ou les chauve-souris… Nous utilisons ensuite une caméra benthique, qui nous permet de prendre de belles photos du fond. Une fois certains que les conditions sont réunies, nous déployons les engins depuis le pont arrière, et déroulons les cables pour atteindre des profondeurs de 500, 750, 1000, 1500 et 2000 m.

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Capture d’ecran du SWATH en action. Les couleurs sont proportionnelles a la profondeur (bleu: plus profond; rouge: moins profond). Photo: Louise Allcock.

Nous remontons ensuite les engins et trions et identifions tous les animaux, ce qui représente un travail très intense, que nous réalisons en équipe.

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Lancement du chalut Agassiz depuis le pont arriere du JCR. Photo: Bruno Danis

Tri des echantillons

Une fois a bord, les echantillons sont tries dans le “WetLab”. Photo: Richard Turner

Qu’avons nous trouvé jusqu’ici?

Nous sommes à la moitié de l’expédition, et les différents endroits où nous avons travaillé (que l’on appelle des stations) montrent une diversité très différente. Certaines stations sont relativement pauvres en animaux, mais d’autres sont très riches, et nous avons probablement déjà récolté un nombre important de nouvelles espèces! Ce que nous accumulons comme information devra nous permettre de bien choisir les endroits qui doivent être protégés.

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Quelques animaux recoltes au cours de la campagne. Photos: Claudio Ghiglione, Camille Moreau, Helena Wiklund, Cath Waller

 

Pour en savoir plus… suivez le hashtag #SoAntEco sur Twitter

 

A review of the Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean

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A review of the Biogeographic Atlas was recently published by John Davenport in Antarctic Science.

Here are a few quotes from the article you can find online.

“The Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean is a milestone product of 21st century Antarctic Science. ”

“It is an excellent showcase of the value of modern scientific power combined with co-operative and altruistic endeavour. ”

On the other hand, the SCAR Newsletter just published a focus on the Biogeographic Atlas.

New paper in Advances in Polar Science

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A new paper by lead author Angelika Brandt was recently published in Advances in Polar Sciences. The paper addresses the main issues faced in the framework of deep-sea biodiversity monitoring:

Despite recent progress in deep-sea biodiversity assessments in the Southern Ocean (SO), there remain gaps in our knowledge that hamper efficient deep-sea monitoring in times of rapid climate change. These include geographical sampling bias, depth and size-dependent faunal gaps in biology, ecology, distribution, and phylogeography, and the evolution of SO species. The phenomena of species patchiness and rarity are still not well understood, possibly because of our limited understanding of physiological adaptations and thresholds. Even though some shallow water species have been investigated physiologically, community-scale studies on the effects of multiple stressors related to ongoing environmental change, including temperature rise, ocean acidification, and shifts in deposition of phytoplankton, are completely unknown for deep-sea organisms. Thus, the establishment of long-term and coordinated monitoring programs, such as those rapidly growing under the umbrella of the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) or the Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS), may represent unique tools for measuring the status and trends of deep-sea and SO ecosystems.

Citation: Brandt, A., Griffiths, H., Gutt, J., Linse, K., Ballerini, T., Danis, B., & Pfannkuche, O. (2014). Challenges of deep-sea biodiversity assessments in the Southern Ocean. Advances in Polar Sciences, 25(3), 204–212. doi:10.13679/j.advps.2014.3.00204

The SCAR Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean

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The SCAR Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean has been officially launched at the SCAR Open Science Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. The Marine Biology Lab of the ULB has been heavily involved in the effort, mainly in the edition, data mobilization and writing of the book.

You can download the first chapter of the Atlas as a preview.

Below is the press release, as prepared by the British Antarctic Survey.

The new Atlas, providing the most thorough audit of marine life in the Southern Ocean, is published this week by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). Leading marine biologists and oceanographers from all over the world spent the last four years compiling everything they know about ocean species from microbes to whales.

It’s the first time that such an effort has been undertaken since 1969 when the American Society of Geography published its Antarctic Map Folio Series.

In an unprecedented international collaboration 147 scientists from 91 institutions across 22 countries (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the USA) combined their expertise and knowledge to produce the new Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean.

More than 9000 species are recorded, ranging from microbes to whales. Hundreds of thousands of records show the extent of scientific knowledge on the distribution of life in the Southern Ocean. In 66 chapters, the scientists examine the evolution, physical environment, genetics and possible impact of climate change on marine organisms in the region.

Chief editor, Claude De Broyer, of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, said:

“This is the first time that all the records of the unique Antarctic marine biodiversity, from the very beginnings of Antarctic exploration in the days of Captain Cook, have been compiled, analysed and mapped by the scientific community. It has resulted in a comprehensive atlas and an accessible database of useful information on the conservation of Antarctic marine life.”

The data, and expert opinions, in the Atlas will help inform conservation policy, including the debate over whether or not to establish marine protected areas in the open ocean. Sophisticated environmental models coupled with existing species distribution data provide a valuable outlook on the possible future distribution of key species as they adapt to climate change.

New advances in genetics have shed light on some of the best known species from the Antarctic sea floor. The giant isopod crustacean Glyptonotus antarcticus is one of those. The animal lives on the edge of the continent at depths of up to 600 metres. Previously considered to be a single species with a circumpolar distribution, molecular barcoding suggests it may, in reality, be a group with up to eleven species inhabiting much smaller geographic regions.

Author, and editor, Huw Griffiths, of the British Antarctic Survey, said:

“The book is unique and contains an amazing collection of information and photos. It’s been an enormous international effort and will serve as a legacy to the dedicated team of scientists who have contributed to it. The Atlas is a must-read for anyone interested in the animals living at the end of the Earth.”

The Atlas contains around 100 colour photos and 800 maps. It will be launched at the SCAR 2014 Open Science Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on Monday 25th August.

BIOMAR Lab hosting dBASO workshop

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This week, we will be hosting an international workshop to scope out the new dynamic Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean (dBASO), a followup project of SCAR’s Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean.

At the end of five years of extensive biodiversity exploration and assessment by CAML and the OBIS Antarctic Node (the SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network), a new initiative, the multi-authored “SCAR Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean”, has been established under the aegis of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to provide an up-to-date synthesis of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic biogeographic knowledge and to make available a new comprehensive online resource for visualisation, analysis and modelling of species distribution. It will constitute a major scientific output of CAML and SCAR-MarBIN as well as being a significant legacy of CoML and the International Polar Year to fulfill the needs of biogeographic information for science, conservation, monitoring and sustainable management of the changing Southern Ocean. It will be of direct benefit to the Antarctic Treaty and associated bodies such as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

Ten participants from 5 countries (Australia, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Belgium) will be working on the initial development steps to make dBASO go live.