The Distribution of Antarctic Marine Benthic Communities

The Polar Frontal Zone, although predominantly a surface feature, forms a natural northernmost boundary for defining the Southern Ocean, and relatively few benthic organisms have distributions which cross this boundary. Many Antarctic benthic plants and animals have circumpolar distributions but some broad geographical subdivisions may be made. Detailed studies of community distribution are few in Antarctica, but heterogeneity has been demonstrated on all spatial scales. The Southern Ocean has a rich fauna compared with the much younger Arctic basin, and there is no convincing evidence either for or against a universallatitudinal cline in diversity in the southern hemisphere to match that well described from the northern hemisphere. Shallow water distributions are strongly affected by ice-related processes, and this leads to a strong vertical zonation in the biological assemblages of sublittoral habitats.