The legacy of Southern Ocean past: evolutionary history and genetic diversity of benthic Crustacea on the Antarctic shelf

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The ongoing project is studying the evolutionary history of the Antarctic benthos and suprabenthos to determine the processes that shaped it historically. As model systems we use marine crustaceans from the Antarctic Shelf (East and West Antarctica) with different life histories ranging from brooding to holoplanktonic forms. The project comprises phylogenetic, phylogeographic and population genetic methods to study radiations of genera and species, reconstruct their colonization pathways on the Antarctic Shelf, determine biogeographic boundaries on the shelf, and assess signatures of historic events such as population expansions and bottlenecks. In the last third of the project we will specifically test whether distribution of genetic variation is congruent with expectations based on major oceanographic currents and whether concurrent genetic discontinuities can be identified among species, which can then be interpreted as the result of events in their common environmental history (e.g. glaciations). The taxa included in our analyses are studied in the broadest sense, complementing them as much as possible with representatives from outside Antarctica to understand phylogenetic relationships and mode and age of colonization(s) of the Antarctic Shelf. The project also makes an active contribution to ongoing barcoding efforts of Antarctic marine fauna by providing mitochondrial sequences of a large number of Antarctic Crustacea. With the assessment of both, today s intra- and interspecific genetic diversity of Antarctic crustaceans, our research project provides important baseline information for monitoring species composition and studying response to rapid Antarctic climate change.