Award: PLR-1043670

The Antarctic is an area rich with biodiversity that has been and is currently greatly influenced by global climate change. However, knowledge of distribution and biodiversity patterns of benthic marine invertebrates in the continental waters around the continent is limited. Over the course this grant our collaborative group has been exploring hypotheses related to the biodiversity of Antarctic marine invertebrates. Two long held biogeographic assumptions about Antarctic marine invertebrates is that oceanographic features restricts species to the waters around Antarctica and that, within the waters of the Antarctic, species are circumpolar (meaning a species are distributed completely around the Antarctic continent). Our work during this funding period examined the mitochondrial and nuclear genes and genomes of samples from the Southern Ocean using molecular tools to determine relatedness of individuals in Southern Ocean waters. Among other taxa we have looked at species of sea stars, brittle stars, sea spiders, nemerteans, and octopus, and found that they contain far more diversity than traditionally recognized. In other words, biodiversity of the Antarctic is greatly underestimated and there are far more species than previously recognized. Part of this diversity is due to the fact that individuals and populations of species are not just randomly distributed around the southern continents. Whereas a few species do have circumpolar distributions, we find that several (e.g., the brittle star Astrotoma, and Colossendeis sea spiders) taxa appear to have limited distributions. This project has also obtained complete mitochondrial genomes from several taxa in multiple groups to aid with design of future tools that can be used for conservation or biogeography efforts. During the course of this project, we undertook two major scientific cruises to the Southern Ocean covering most of the Western Antarctic. In particular, one voyage covered the Bellingshausen, Amundsen and Ross Sea, including areas (Wright?s Bay) around the continent that have, to the best of our knowledge, never been sampled for bottom dwelling marine life. These cruises consisted of an international group of scientists and included graduate students (scientists in training) and undergraduate students, many from underrepresented groups. Samples from these cruises are now being used in numerous scientific studies. One of the major findings on the cruises was the discovery of tube-building acorn worms. This report showed that a major group of animals has previously gone unnoticed in the Antarctic. Their tube building nature linked them to worms that existed over 500 million years ago (based on Cambrian fossils). Additionally, to engage a broader audience, we hosted a daily blog on our group websites (www.auburn.edu/antarctica and http://people.cst.cmich.edu/mahon2a) that reached out to thousands of individuals. This effort was followed up by K-12 activities once we returned to our home institutions (Auburn University and Central Michigan University). These events have reached hundreds of school age children and have involved one-on-one interaction with specimens and scientist who have been to the Antarctic. Our outreach activities were capped off by a photo exhibit at Central Michigan University that drew over 500 visitors. In scientific circles, we have published several manuscripts in international journals and are continuing towards a large number more, and have made well over 40 presentations at professional meetings and other academic venues. Last Modified: 10/31/2016 Submitted by: Andrew R Mahon