24-03-2017
Polar front’s oceanographic barrier is not as impermeable for bryozoans of the Southern Ocean as tho
The polar front, an oceanographic barrier between the Austral Ocean and its surrounding water masses, is not the impermeable biogeograpgical barrier it was thought to be, according to an article published in the journal Marine Environmental Research with Blanca Figuerola, from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the UB (IRBio) as main author of the study.
In the transition area between South America and the Antarctica, between 45 and 60º S. latitude, we can find these archipelagos, which have a marine fauna that could bring essential information on biodiversity distribution patterns and biogeography of the most extreme ocean ecosystems. The new study shows the most complete inventory so far on the distribution of bryozoans -marine invertebrates living in colonies and forming mineralized skeletons- in the shallow waters of the Falkland Islands (Atlantic Ocean) and South Georgia Islands (Austral Ocean), located in the north and south of the polar front, respectively.