RAPID: Monographing the Antarctic and Subantarctic Cumacea

海洋群落在确定全球变化对自然和人类的影响方面发挥着重要作用。这些群落中最引人注目的成员通常是大型脊椎动物，如海洋哺乳动物和海鸟。但较小的动物往往决定了这些变化如何影响那些有魅力的动物。在南极，一些最剧烈的物理变化正在发生，我们对存在的小动物知之甚少。该项目将对亚南极和三个不同的南极海域进行采样，希望能够识别、量化和发现一组小型无脊椎动物的物种变化。逗号虾，也被称为cumacoans，在其他地方很少见，但在这些地方的群落中可能很常见和重要。在南极取样时，传统上使用的渔具并不能很有效地捕捉到cumacea，所以我们不知道那里有什么物种，也不知道它们有多常见。这项研究将利用现代采样方法，将允许逗号虾取样。这将导致对逗号虾的多样性和丰富性的发现，以及它们与其他无脊椎动物物种的关系。这项工作的主要影响将是加强博物馆的收藏，发展对南极洲所有逗号虾的描述，包括新的和未命名的物种。这些贡献可能尤其重要，因为我们努力了解是什么驱动了与南极食物网联系在一起的有魅力的脊椎动物和渔业的动态。该项目将使用底栖动物雪橇从阿根廷水域、布兰斯菲尔德海峡和威德尔海的底栖动物样本中收集cumaceans。标本将在95%乙醇中固定，并在95%乙醇和5%甘油中保存，以保存形态和DNA。这些标本将构成一本专著的基础，该专著综合了亚南极和南极Cumacea的现有知识，包括所有物种的诊断，新物种的描述，已知物种目前未知的生命阶段的附加描述，以及所有收集到的物种的证明基因序列。该专著将包括该地区已知的所有科、属和物种的钥匙。包括鉴定资源的专著修订通常对其他广泛的科学家有用数十年。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Ocean communities play an important role in determining the natural and human impacts of global change. The most conspicuous members of those communities are generally large vertebrates such as marine mammals and sea birds. But smaller animals often determine how the changes impact those charismatic animals. In the Antarctic, where some of the most dramatic physical changes are taking place, we do not know much about what small animals exist. This project will sample the sub-Antarctic and three different Antarctic seas with a hope of identifying, quantifying and discovering the variation in species of a group of small invertebrates. Comma shrimp, also called cumaceans, are rarely seen elsewhere but may be common and important in the communities of these locations. Antarctic sampling traditionally used gear that was not very effective at catching cumaceans so we do not know what species exist there and how common they are. This study will utilize modern sampling methods that will allow comma shrimp to be sampled. This will lead to discoveries about the diversity and abundance of comma shrimp, as well as their relationship to other invertebrate species. Major impacts of this work will be an enhancement of museum collections, the development of description of all the comma shrimp of Antarctica including new and unnamed species. Those contributions may be especially important as we strive to understand what drives the dynamics of charismatic vertebrates and fisheries that are tied to Antarctic food webs. This project will collect cumaceans from benthic samples from Argentinian waters, Bransfield Strait, and the Weddell Sea using benthic sleds. Specimens will be fixed in 95% ethanol and preserved in 95% ethanol and 5% glycerin to preserve both morphology and DNA. The specimens will form the basis for a monograph synthesizing current knowledge on the Subantarctic and Antarctic Cumacea, including diagnoses of all species, descriptions of new species, additional description for currently unknown life stages of known species, and vouchered gene sequences for all species collected. The monograph will include keys to all families, genera and species known from the region. Monographic revisions that include identification resources are typically useful for decades to a broad spectrum of other scientists.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.