(Table 1) Sympagic meiofauna and amphipods inhabiting the meltponds in the Central Arctic sampled during POLARSTERN cruise ARK-XXII/2

DOI

Meltponds on Arctic sea ice have previously been reported to be devoid of marine metazoans due to fresh-water conditions. The predominantly dark frequently also green and brownish meltponds observed in the Central Arctic in summer 2007 hinted to brackish conditions and considerable amounts of algae, possibly making the habitat suitable for marine metazoans. Environmental conditions in meltponds as well as sympagic meiofauna in new ice covering pond surfaces and in rotten ice on the bottom of ponds were studied, applying modified techniques from sea-ice and under-ice research. Due to the very porous structure of the rotten ice, the meltponds were usually brackish to saline, providing living conditions very similar to sub-ice water. The new ice cover on the surface had similar characteristics as the bottom layer of level ice. The ponds were thus accessible to and inhabitable by metazoans. The new ice cover and the rotten ice were inhabited by various sympagic meiofauna taxa, predominantly ciliates, rotifers, acoels, nematodes and foraminiferans. Also, sympagic amphipods were found on the bottom of meltponds. We suggest that, in consequence of global warming, brackish and saline meltponds are becoming more frequent in the Arctic, providing a new habitat to marine metazoans.

+++ abundant and dominant, ++ abundant, + present in low abundance, - not observed. Taxa, which were found in level ice (bottom 5 cm) or sub-ice (layer 0 m) but not in meltponds are also listed (all cells "-").

Supplement to: Kramer, Maike; Kiko, Rainer (2011): Brackish meltponds on Arctic sea ice - a new habitat for marine metazoans. Polar Biology, 34(4), 603-608

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.848479
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-010-0911-z
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.848479
Provenance
Creator Kramer, Maike; Kiko, Rainer ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2011
Funding Reference German Research Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659 Crossref Funder ID 5472008 https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/5472008 Priority Programme 1158 Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 169 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-169.732W, 84.653S, 102.732E, 88.156N); Arctic Ocean
Temporal Coverage Begin 2007-08-31T17:50:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2007-09-16T21:30:00Z