Arctic Ocean Cumacea

Biodiversity Trends along the Western European Margin

“…The Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge acts as a physical barrier and thus has an effect on the overall diversity. Work published by Russian researchers in the late 1980s found that the species richness of many different faunal groups, including cumaceans [99] , echinoderms [100] , and prosobranch gastropods [101] , was much lower in the Arctic deep sea than on the nearby shelves.…”

Peer Review #1 of "Adding pieces to the puzzle: insights into diversity and distribution patterns of Cumacea (Crustacea: Peracarida) from the deep North Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean (v0.1)"

“…Dia16-A, though, was revealed to be a distinct genetically differentiated population in ecoregion 4. Earlier records of this species complex are from the same distribution area, and described as a predominantly bathyal Atlantic, boreal-Arctic species (Jones, 1976;Vassilenko, 1989). Watling & Gerken (2005) observed L. longimana to be present over a wide temperature range.…”

“…The species Leucon (Leucon) profundus Hansen, 1920 (Leu11;Fig. 13-B) and Leucon (Alytoleucon) pallidus (Leu05) were the most common species of this family in the investigated material. Vassilenko (1989) and Gerken & Watling (1999) described both with a circumpolar distribution range from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Canadian Arctic Ocean, but mostly found in cold-water stations (Watling & Gerken, 2005). However, by our samples, new occurrence records of these species were added in the Norwegian Sea waters influenced by the North-Atlantic current, suggesting an extension of the distribution range for warmer waters of the previously assumed cold-water species.…”

“…A recent study by Loerz et al (2021) about amphipods supports water-mass properties to be the main factor shaping species distributions at the boundary between the North Atlantic and Arctic waters as well as the prominent submarine Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge playing a major role in hindering the exchange of deep-sea species between northern and southern deep-sea basins. Large numbers of cumaceans are assumed to remain undiscovered in greater depths, as shelf fauna has been studied to a larger extent and, thus, the abundance and diversity of cumaceans is probably underestimated (Jones, 1972;Vassilenko, 1989;Gage et al, 2004 and references therein). This study aims to present a first insight into biogeographical species diversity of cumaceans from North Atlantic to Arctic waters.…”

Vertical zonation of the Siberian Arctic benthos: bathymetric boundaries from coastal shoals to deep-sea Central Arctic

“…Outside the Arctic, a parabolic trend of benthic diversity is observed with peak values at ~2,000–3,000 m ( Rex & Etter, 2010 ). In the Kara, Laptev and East-Siberian Seas the peak of species richness occurs at approximately 100 m, in the Barents Sea—slightly deeper 100 m ( Anisimova, 1989 ; Stepanjants, 1989 ; Vassilenko, 1989 ; Vedenin et al, 2018 ), whereas in the Chukchi Sea—shallower 100 m ( Golikov, 1989 ; Stepanjants, 1989 ; Vassilenko, 1989 ).…”