Prof. Maria Włodarska-kowalczuk1, Dr Mikołaj Mazurkiewicz, Dr Joanna Pawłowska, Dr Ines Barrenechea Angeles, dr Katarzyna Grzelak, MSc Kajetan Deja, Dr Agata Zaborska, Prof Jan Pawlowski
1Instiute Of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland
Biography:
Maria Włodarska-Kowalczuk is a profesor in marine ecology with a special focus on polar benthic systems. She studied diversity and functioning of benthic communities in Arctic and Antarctic across various systems from shallow rocky shores and kelp beds, subtidal fiordic basins down to abyssal depth, with a record of over 80 publications and experience in leading research groups. She is the head of the Marine Ecology Department and the Laboratory of Benthic Ecology at Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences.
Abstract:
Arctic coastal ecosystems are increasingly exposed to dramatic environmental changes and multiple stressors arising from climate warming. The effects of these stressors on benthic biodiversity have been well recognized for large size biota (macrozoobenthos) analyzed using traditional (morphology based) methods. In this study we applied sediment eDNA together with morphology-based species inventories to compare the effects of glacially mediated disturbance on benthic macrofauna, meiofauna and Foraminifera in a Svalbard fjord. Three genetic markers targeting metazoans (COI), meiofauna (18S VIV2) and Foraminifera (18S 37f) were used. Macrofauna (analysed morphologically) showed an clear change in taxonomic composition and a dramatic cline in diversity in response to glacially mediated disturbance. Such patterns were not observed for macrofauna taxa recorded in metabarcoding datasets. Nematoda and Foraminifera morphological and molecular data demonstrated a gradual change in both alpha diversity and taxonomic composition and more subtle responses to environmental changes along the fjord axis. These differences indicate that patterns of response described for macrobenthos (most commonly used in impact studies) should not be directly transposed to meiofaunal biota. The study also confirms the usefulness of sedimentary DNA metabarcoding as a complementary tool to assess the biodiversity changes in Arctic ecosystems, particularly suitable for analysis of meiobenthos.