Systematics, Biodiversity and Biogeography of Southern Ocean Uristidae (Amphipoda: Lysianassoidea): An integrative approach

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Southern Ocean Lysianassoidea (Amphipoda: Crustacea) belong to one of the most diverse and abundant taxa in benthic communities and play an important role in Antarctic food webs. Despite these advantageous features that would potentially make these benthic brooders an ideal model taxon for evolutionary and ecological studies in Southern Ocean benthic organisms, their usefulness in such is hampered by their problematic systematic status. This is due to only few understood and informative phenotypic characters in the Lysianassoidea and in particular in the family Uristidae. The proposed collaborative project has two major objectives. The first objective is to revise the systematics of the Southern Ocean Uristidae. A particular aim will be to detect presently overlooked species with genetic methods, search for informative characters using modern morphometric methods and to revise the uristid phylogenetic system based on both approaches. We will create open access determination keys and actively contribute to on-going barcoding efforts of Antarctic marine life. The second objective of the project is to address evolutionary questions regarding the origin and radiation of Southern Ocean Uristidae in the context of the geological and climatic history of Antarctica. Specifically, we will statistically test competing scenarios of origin and radiation as well as of biogeographic distribution for selected species and formulate new hypotheses.