Sclerochronology in the Southern Ocean

Abstract This manuscript aims to provide a comprehensive review of the work done by Antarctic sclerochronology research across different taxa (arthropods, bivalves, brachiopods, bryozoans, cephalopods, hard and soft corals, gastropods, echinoderms teleost fish), an analysis current challenges in discipline start discussion what can offer for future. The Southern Ocean ecosystem remains largely unstudied part its remoteness, extreme climate strong seasonality. lack knowledge, some it even on basic biological information, is especially worrying due ongoing climate-driven changes that experiencing. Lack long-term situ instrumental series has also being detriment understand feedbacks between physical environment ecosystem. Sclerochronology, study periodic accretional patterns body structures living organisms, contributed wide range disciplines (e.g. paleoclimate reconstructions, population structure analysis, environmental proxies). highlights disparity focus with groups fish) attracting most attention, whereas other gastropod) have attracted much little attention or cases almost non-existent echinoderms). Some long-lived species considered this potential much-needed high-resolution eco-environmental proxy data play important role blue carbon storage Sothern Ocean. Another issue identified was cross-validation analytical techniques. Graphic abstract