Description: Arctic oceans are undergoing major changes in many of its fundamental physical constituents, such as shifts from multi- to first-year ice and alterations in the distribution of water masses (Fig. 1). Such changes, often resulting from anthropogenic stressors, have profound impacts on the chemical and biological processes that are at the root of Arctic marine food webs, influencing their structure, function and biodiversity1,2. Yet, much research addressing these on-going changes in the Arctic are limited to local scales or rather exploratory by nature, making it imperative to better characterise and understand the structural and functional diversity of ecological systems that contribute to the marine Arctic across larger scales3,4. We aim to offer more insight in the distributions and abundance of macrobenthic species in Arctic seascapes, e.g. bivalves, polychaetes, and crustaceans that live in marine soft bottoms. Building on recent pan-Arctic community data from 5000 locations, we address a fundamental challenge in Arctic ecological research by employing quantitative models thus far not feasible, enabling assessing spatial diversity patterns and link community organisation and ecosystem functioning.

Description: Freshwater bivalves of the order Unionoida display an uncommon phenotypic plasticity with high interpopulation and intrapopulation morphological variability, which could be advantageous for coping with habitat modifications. However, unionoids have suffered a marked population decline in different parts of the world in the last decades. A decline in some populations of the South American long‐lived freshwater mussel Diplodon chilensis as a consequence of habitat deterioration has recently been recorded. Ontogenetic allometry and shape variation in shells of D. chilensis from 2 different sites, Paimun lake and Chimehuin river, North Patagonia, Argentina, have been studied. For these purposes, geometric morphometric methods were used. Shell shape shows differences between sites, which the shells from Chimehuin river show less intrapopulation variability; are more elongated, with the anterior part extended upwards and the posterior part downwards; and show a steeper anterior curvature at the umbo compared to those from Paimún lake. These characteristics make shell shape more streamlined to withstand river current. Furthermore, the extended posterior‐ventral part in river shells coincides with higher foot weight that would improve anchoring to the river rocky–sandy substrate. River shells present a bounded eco‐morphotype whereas the higher variability of lake shells includes the “river eco‐morphotype.” Growth is allometric throughout life in both sites and is not sex‐dependent. The success of river repopulation programmes using mussels from lake populations may be increased by transplanting selected individuals that show “river eco‐morphotype.”

Description: Biological hard parts and skeletons of aquatic organisms often archive information of past environmental conditions. Deciphering such information forms an essential contribution to our understanding of past climate conditions and thus our ability to mitigate the climatic, ecological, and social impacts of a rapidly changing environment. Several established techniques enable the visualization and reliable use of the information stored in anatomical features of such biogenic archives, i.e., its growth patterns. Here, we test whether confocal Raman microscopy (CRM) is a suitable method to reliably identify growth patterns in the commonly used archive Arctica islandica and the extinct species Pygocardia rustica (both Bivalvia). A modern A. islandica specimen from Norway has been investigated to verify the general feasibility of CRM, resulting in highly correlated standardized growth indices (r〉0.96; p〈0.0001) between CRM-derived measurements and measurements derived from the established methods of fluorescence microscopy and Mutvei’s solution staining. This demonstrates the general suitability of CRM as a method for growth pattern evaluation and cross-dating applications. Moreover, CRM may be of particular interest for paleoenvironmental reconstructions, as it yielded superior results in the analysis of fossil shell specimens (A. islandica and P. rustica) compared to both Mutvei staining and fluorescence microscopy. CRM is a reliable and valuable tool to visualize internal growth patterns in both modern and fossil calcium carbonate shells that notably also facilitates the assessment of possible diagenetic alteration prior to geochemical analysis without geochemically compromising the sample. We strongly recommend the CRM approach for the visualization of growth patterns in fossil biogenic archives, where conventional methods fail to produce useful results.