Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 23, Issue 14, Pages 1330-1334Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.05.051
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Funding
- Alfred Wegener Institute [PACES T1.4, T1.6]
- University of Gothenburg
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [JA 1063/14, JA 1063/1, JA 1063/2, JA 1063/17-1]
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Over 30% of the Antarctic continental shelf is permanently covered by floating ice shelves [1], providing aphotic conditions [2, 3] for a depauperate fauna sustained by laterally advected food [4, 5]. In much of the remaining Antarctic shallows (<300 m depth), seasonal sea-ice melting allows a patchy primary production supporting rich megabenthic communities [6, 7] dominated by glass sponges (Porifera, Hexactinellida) [8-10]. The catastrophic collapse of ice shelves due to rapid regional warming along the Antarctic Peninsula in recent decades [11] has exposed over 23,000 km(2) of seafloor to local primary production [12]. The response of the benthos to this unprecedented flux of food [13] is, however, still unknown. In 2007, 12 years after disintegration of the Larsen A ice shelf, a first biological survey interpreted the presence of hexactinellids as remnants of a former under-ice fauna with deep-sea characteristics [14]. Four years later, we revisited the original transect, finding 2- and 3-fold increases in glass sponge biomass and abundance, respectively, after only two favorable growth periods. Our findings, along with other long-term studies [15], suggest that Antarctic hexactinellids, locked in arrested growth for decades [8, 16], may undergo boom-and-bust cycles, allowing them to quickly colonize new habitats. The cues triggering growth and reproduction in Antarctic glass sponges remain enigmatic.
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