New distributional records of Southern Ocean Isopoda based on vouchers from the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa)

The order Isopoda Latreille, 1816 consists of a large number of species occurring in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments. In the Southern Ocean (SO), this group is among the most speciose ones and occurs at all depths. Isopoda biogeography, despite being studied since the first Antarctic expeditions, is still poorly known from a geographical point of view, showing large occurrence gaps for some groups in specific sectors of the SO. In this paper, we update the isopod checklists of the Ross Sea and of some peri-Antarctic areas, such as the South Orkney Islands (SOI) and the South Sandwich Islands (SSI), based on the study of museum vouchers curated by the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa). A total of 279 MNA samples from 15 different expeditions were studied. From this material, 41 accepted species distributed in 24 families, and 51 genera were recognized. Comparing this newly obtained information with the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and OBIS (Ocean Biodiversity Information System) portal, 15 species are here reported for the first time in the Ross Sea, with 5 new records in the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area. All records are new for the Terra Nova Bay area, for which a checklist of this group has never been produced before. This dataset is published by Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA) under the license CC BY 4.0. Please follow the guidelines from the SCAR Data Policy (SCAR, 2022) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via data-biodiversity-aq@naturalsciences.be. Issues with dataset can be reported at https://github.com/biodiversity-aq/data-publication/ The publication of this data paper was funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO, contract n°FR/36/AN1/AntaBIS) in the Framework of EU-Lifewatch as a contribution to the SCAR Antarctic biodiversity portal (biodiversity.aq)

Citation: Noli N, Cecchetto M, Guzzi A, Grillo M, Cometti V, Schiaparelli S, Gan Y (2024). New distributional records of Southern Ocean Isopoda based on vouchers from the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa). Version 1.6. Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa). Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=mna_isopoda&v=1.6

Published: May 17, 2024 at 06:12

URL: https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=mna_isopoda