A quarter of all marine methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is estimated to be hosted in Southern Ocean sediments. Climate change-induced ocean warming and ice shelf melting risk the stability of sedimentary gas hydrates, resulting in potential degassing and establishment of marine methane seeps. While methane seeps can originate from various sources, the destabilisation of gas hydrates may contribute to the formation and persis...

Habitat heterogeneity is important for maintaining high levels of benthic biodiversity. The Prince Gustav Channel, on the Eastern Antarctic Peninsula, is characterized by an array of habitat types, ranging from flat, mud-dominated sheltered bays to steep and rocky exposed slopes. The channel has undergone dramatic environmental changes in recent decades, with the southern end of the channel permanently covered by the Prince Gu...

Motivation Traits are increasingly being used to quantify global biodiversity patterns, with trait databases growing in size and number, across diverse taxa. Despite growing interest in a trait‐based approach to the biodiversity of the deep sea, where the impacts of human activities (including seabed mining) accelerate, there is no single repository for species traits for deep‐sea chemosynthesis‐based ecosystems, including hyd...

We report the first comparative population genetics study for vent fauna in the Southern Ocean using cytochrome C oxidase I and microsatellite markers. Three species are examined: the kiwaid squat lobster, Kiwa tyleri , the peltospirid gastropod, Gigantopelta chessoia, and a lepetodrilid limpet, Lepetodrilus sp., collected from vent fields 440 km apart on the East Scotia Ridge ( ESR ) and from the Kemp Caldera on the South San...

Aim We ask how biodiverse is a polar archipelago; how this faunal richness is spread across marine, intertidal, freshwater, terrestrial and parasitic realms; and how fast species are accumulated with increased sampling effort. Location The South Orkney Islands (SOI), Scotia Arc, Southern Ocean. Methods We sampled mega‐ and macro‐benthos at the SOI using scuba in the shallows (0–10 m), a rough bottom otter trawl at 150–250 m an...

Aim To investigate whether the biogeographical regions proposed by J. W. Hedgpeth and widely adopted by other authors hold true, are an oversimplification or with further data might show a unified Antarctic province. Location Southern Hemisphere. Methods The distributions of 1318 species of bivalves, 4656 species of gastropods, 1465 species of cheilostome and 167 species of cyclostome bryozoans were analysed for 29 regions in...