Description: Amiantis purpurata is a typical warm-temperate water species distributed from southern Brazil to northern Patagonia, Argentina. Recent and well preserved fossil specimens were recovered from San Matías Gulf in northern Patagonia. Holocene (shell age 3630 ±100 years BP) and interglacial Pleistocene (MIS 5, 100 ka years BP) marine sediments were used for a comparative analysis of stable isotopic profiles (δ18O; δ13C). The values range of Pleistocene A. purpurata was from -0,93‰ to 0,85‰ for δ18O and from -1,02‰ to 1,9‰ for δ13C. Holocene shell was from -0,34‰ to 1,13‰ for δ18O and from 1,45‰ to 2,44‰ for δ13C. And Recent shell was from -0,66‰ to 1,56‰ for δ18O and from 0,7‰ to 2,6‰ for δ13C. The δ18O values indicate warmer waters in Pleistocene compared to Holocene and Recent. The intra-annual δ18O shell temperature is higher today (Δδ18ORecent=2,22‰) compared to the Holocene (Δδ18OHolocene=1,47‰) and the Pleistocene (Δδ18OPleistocene=1,76‰). Pleistocene δ13C range value was the widest (Δδ13CPleistocene=2,92‰), but Holocene (Δδ13CHolocene=0,98‰) and Recent (Δδ13CRecent=1,9‰) values were tighter and more positive than Pleistocene. This could be explained by changes in ocean circulation since San Matías Gulf would has been formed approaching 12 ka years BP (after MIS 5, Ponce et al. 2011 Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 103, 363–379). These shells showed a clear marine environment but with a difference in sea surface temperature and ocean circulation through geological time in northern Patagonia. Our findings indicate that A. purpurata is a suitable candidate for detailed paleoenvironment reconstructions in North Patagonia. Further analyses will show whether some notable events that occurred during the Holocene, such as the Neoglacial (early Holocene), the Hypsithermal (Middle Holocene) and the Little Ice Age (Late Holocene) have been recorded in fossil A. purpurata shells.

Description: Since the 1970s tremendous changes have been observed in the Arctic region. As such, the surface air temperature within this region has increased twice the global average and according to existing climate model predictions, this trend will continue in the future (IPCC, 2007). However, interpretation of such transformation, which results from greenhouse warming, is still difficult. This is due to a lack of knowledge about the influence of multi-annual to decadal climate variations and the fact that climatic data from this region are usually temporally and spatially biased. Therefore, a better understanding and further research on the effects and predictability of climate variability is needed. We examined the growth variability in shells of the bivalve Arctica islandica which is affected by environmental factors, mainly temperature or food supply. We compare shells from two sampling sites, the northern Norwegian coast and Kola Peninsula coast (SW Barents Sea). Both localities are in the realm of the Norwegian Coastal Current (after crossing the border to Russia it is called the Murman Coastal Current). For the investigation of the annual and inter-annual growth variability all collected shells were cut parallel to the line of strongest growth (LSG) and 3 mm thick-sections were attached to a glass slide. After grinding and polishing, the cross-sections were stained in Mutvei´s solution. Annual growth bands were identified and measured. Samples for the stable oxygen isotope (δ18O) analysis and the seasonality approach were taken using a hand drill and the milling technique. As our prime objective we compared the shell growth of the Norwegian and the Russian populations and determined the external factors controlling the annual shell growth variability in A. islandica. Furthermore, the shells from both populations have been checked for decadal oscillations (NAO? ACRI?). Finally, stable oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O) profiles have been measured to identify seasonal signals and to reconstruct regional water temperature variability at a sub-annual level.

Description: Biological traits analysis is one of the most auspicious approaches to study the ecological functioning in marine ecosystems and provides a mechanistic link to ecosystem processes and properties. We used a Biological trait analysis to examine a dataset of 334 macrofaunal species that were collected at 4 long-term stations in the North Sea between 1969-2011. This data include seventeen biological traits related to life history (e.g. reproductive type) and behavior (e.g. feeding habit) of macrofuna species. In order to include all possible attributes of species, these traits were broken down into seventy-two categories. The affinities of the species to the categories were fuzzy coded with a scoring range of 0 to 3 (0= no affinity, 1= low affinity, 2=moderate affinity and 3=high association of taxon with the trait category). Missing values were supplemented by using information from the species in the nearest taxonomic level. If the affinity of a species to a category was not identified and there was no information available for the evaluation, a score of 0 was given for all the modalities associated with that species.

Description: Within the next few decades, large underwater structures of thousands of wind turbines in the northern European shelf seas will substantially increase the amount of habitat available for mobile demersal megafauna. As a first indication of the possible effects of this large scale habitat creation on faunal stocks settling on hard substrata, we compared selected taxa of the mobile demersal megafauna (decapods and fish) associated with the foundation of an offshore research platform (a wind-power foundation equivalent) with those of five shipwrecks and different areas of soft bottoms in the southern German Bight, North Sea. When comparing the amount of approximately 5000 planned wind-power foundations (covering 5.1 _ 106 m2 of bottom area) with the existing number of at least 1000 shipwrecks (covering 1.2 _ 106 m2 of bottom area), it becomes clear that the southern North Sea will provide about 4.3 times more available artificial hard substratum habitats than currently available. With regard to the fauna found on shipwrecks, on soft substrata and on the investigated wind-power foundation, we predict that the amount of added hard substrata will allow the stocks of substrata-limited mobile demersal hard bottom species to increase by 25e165% in that area. The fauna found at the offshore platform foundations is very similar to that at shipwrecks. Megafauna abundances at the foundations, however, are lower compared to those at the highly fractured wrecks and are irregularly scattered over the foundations. The upper regions of the platform construction (5 and 15 m depth) were only sparsely colonized by mobile fauna, the anchorages, however, more densely. The faunal assemblages from the shipwrecks and the foundations, respectively, as well as from the soft bottoms clearly differed from each other. We predict that new wind-power foundations will support the spread of hard bottom fauna into soft bottom areas with low wreck densities.

Description: Traditionally, the rationale for energy flow studies was found in the elucidation of energy transfers within ecosystems or within the practical context of the rational management of resources, but it is now widely recognised that its scope embodies almost all biology, including the field of population dynamics and evolutionary studies. Here, we first describe conceptual models of energy and mass budgets at the level of the individual, the population and the community. However, the emphasis is on the next part in which the practicalities of measuring the various components of these budgets in the marine zoobenthic community are described in detail. The measurement of, among other things, ingestion, absorption, defaecation, excretion, growth, reproduction and respiration is discussed. Finally, attention is paid to the estimation of secondary production of benthic populations and to community-level modelling methods.

Description: At the CCAMLR meeting in 2012, the Commission welcomed the offer of Germany to take the lead in developing a Weddell Sea MPA for consideration in 2014. Subsequently, the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection tasked the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research to compile and analyse scientific data for identifying areas which require particular protection in the Weddell Sea. Work under this project started mid-April 2013. This progress report is based on WG-EMM-13/22 which was submitted to WG-EMM 2013 in Bremerhaven, Germany. Germany intends to update the Scientific Committee on the actual state of our project, particularly on the main proceeds of a national data workshop held in Bremerhaven early September 2013. The main objectives of this document are (i) to propose the planning area of our evaluation study, (ii) to provide an update on the data situation, (iii) to draw attention to the forthcoming (early April 2014) international expert workshop on the planning of a Weddell Sea MPA.

Description: Currently Arctic ecosystems seem to change much faster than new research and expeditions can be planned, conducted and evaluated. Under these dynamic conditions, it is almost impossible to establish a baseline that represents pre-change system state. Our initiative of a ”pan-Arctic benthic database” intends to overcome this problem by combining all available biological and ecological data (published and unpublished) in one geo-referenced database to get a better view on the whole Arctic biosphere and its dynamics. We aim at understanding benthic structures (community composition, biodiversity, food web) and processes (production, metabolism) on large scales and at modeling the impact of environmental drivers on the benthic system. Here we demonstrate this approach with respect to the rather poorly known central Arctic benthic system, based on benthic macrofauna data derived from Arctic POLARSTERN expeditions during the last 20 years. We show the spatial distribution of basic benthic community parameters (biomass, biodiversity), of community production and how these parameters are distributet between the major taxonomic groups.

Description: Future global warming will impact coastal marine ecosystems significantly. These changes are expected to be particularly dramatic in the sub-Arctic and Arctic regions which have experienced similar conditions during warm periods in the past (e.g., Holocene Optimum, mid-Pliocene Warm Period). Palaeo-climatic information from these periods will facilitate our predictions of future climate change. Fossil shells of the bivalve Arctica islandica constitute reliable bio-archives for coastal regions of the North Atlantic over geological time scales. We analysed sub-fossil shells of A. islandica from Svalbard for their potential to reconstruct local palaeoenvironmental conditions. These shells were collected from raised beach deposits in Dicksonfjorden, a branch of Isfjorden on the western coast of Spitsbergen. Radiocarbon dating (14CAMS) confirms that the analysed specimens lived at about 8800 yr BP, i.e., during the Holocene Climate Optimum, which was characterized by summer sea surface temperatures 1-3°C warmer than today. This difference in SST also explains today’s extinction of A. islandica on the Svalbard archipelago, as modern water temperatures fall below its thermal tolerance. Analysis of the growth patterns revealed ontogenetic ages of up to 90 years for individual specimens. In addition, the shell growth patterns yield evidence of significant decadal oscillations within the Holocene Climate Optimum in the Arctic. The excellent state of preservation of these shells has been confirmed using Raman microscopy. Since all the sub-fossil shells have been preserved remarkably well, it was considered appropriate to conduct stable oxygen and carbon isotope (δ18O & δ13C) analysis. Results for δ18O show well-defined seasonal cycles, ranging from 1.6‰ to 4.5‰. Ice-volume corrected δ18O values for seawater have been used to calculate palaeo-water temperatures on a sub-annual scale.

Description: Throughout the last decades the anatomical and/or geochemical properties of marine biogenic hard-parts (e.g., mollusc shells, fish otoliths or coralline algae) became a valuable source for palaeoenvironmental information. Regular growth patterns are an important characteristic of these bioarchives, which allow proxy-information to be generated with distinct and high temporal resolution. However, standard methods of growth pattern visualization may fail in fossil bio-archives owing to alterations of the organic compounds within the biogenic materials with time. We demonstrate that confocal Raman microscopy (CRM) can identify and visualize growth patterns of mollusc shells from different geological ages with high spatial resolution (300 nm). In contrast to standard staining techniques (e.g., Mutvei's solution) CRM has been be applied successfully to samples in which the organic components are altered. Furthermore, CRM is ideal to identify mineral (and organic) phases and potential taphonomic alterations (e.g., recrystallization from aragonite to calcite) in marine biogenic carbonates. Checking for such alterations should be a mandatory step prior to any kind of biogeochemical analysis (e.g., stable isotopes or trace elemental ratios) of fossil samples. Therefore, CRM can play an important role in the quality control of biogenic carbonate studies. Here we use CRM to visualize growth structures in the umbonal and the ventral shell portion of the marine bivalve Arctica islandica at different spatial resolutions (μm to mm). The reliability of the method has been tested and proven by comparing the growth structures in Mutvei and CRM derived images of the same modern A. islandica specimen. In addition, CRM has been applied to fossil samples in which staining techniques failed. Derived growth trends are shown and all CRM results are compared to reflected light microscopy and staining methods in the same specimens.