Fine-scale community ecology of Antarctic benthic communities
Supervisor: Dr Emily Mitchell
Co-supervisor: Professor Andrea Manica, Huw Griffiths, Rowan Whittle
This project will investigate how different biological and environmental variables influence community dynamics to understand the key drivers for Antarctic Benthic communities. The extensive data set for this project has already been collected, and consists of both fully reconstructed and identified communities, as well as unprocessed data. The ecological structure of the benthic communities will be reconstructed using spatial point process analyses to infer the dispersal, competition, facilitation and environmental interactions that occur within these communities for a range of communities across different environmental gradients.
Type of work
The student will use substantial existing Antarctic seafloor photographic and video data from BAS and AWI (OFOBS/OFOS), from a range of depths and geographic locations, to reconstruct benthic communities as 2D and 3D models. Complete maps of organism position and size, habitat features and local environmental are already in hand with more data available to focus on specific questions. These analyses will then be used to make inferences about how communities may develop under different environmental change or species exploitation scenarios.
Importance of the area of research concerned
The ecological structure of modern Antarctic benthic marine communities is unique and differs from the rest of the world. It is dominated by epifaunal suspension feeders (including brachiopods, sponges and stalked crinoids) in shelf areas, with a paucity of shell crushing predators (sharks, rays, durophagous decapods). However, generally there is limited data on the Southern Hemisphere benthic ecosystems compared to other areas globally. This project aims to determine the spatial structure of Antarctic communities on fine scales using spatial point process analyses to infer the underlying interactions and associations between taxa. This approach will enable us to establish key species that underpin benthic community ecology, and the environmental factors that affect these Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). The establishment of these ecosystem structures will help quantify the potential future adverse effects of bottom fisheries and anthropogenic climate change on modern Antarctic benthic marine communities. Such information is essential to inform policy makers and develop future sustainable management plans for the region.
References
Mitchell, E.G. and Harris, S., 2020. Mortality, population and community dynamics of the glass sponge dominated community
“The Forest of the Weird” from the Ridge Seamount, Johnston Atoll, Pacific Ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, p.565171. Khan, T.M., Griffiths, H.J., Stephenson, N.P., Whittle, R.J., Purser, A., Manica, A. and Mitchell, E.G., 2025.
Competition drives the dispersal dynamics of two cup coral morphs in populations on the Powell Basin slopes, Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Scientific Reports, 15(1), p.18121. Gutt, J., Griffiths, H.J. & Jones, C.D. 2013.
Circumpolar overview and spatial heterogeneity of Antarctic macrobenthic communities. Marine Biodiversity,