First large survey of southern polar ocean finds new species

William Atkins
Wednesday, 23 May 2007 21:00

Science - Biology

The Southern Ocean, also called the Antarctic Ocean or the South Polar Ocean, is the body of water in the Earth’s southern hemisphere that surrounds the continent of Antarctica.

Studying aboard the German research vessel Polarstern between 2002 and 2005, the team dropped devices that scooped up sediment and living things off the floor of the ocean. Forty sampling sites were visited and devices dropped to the seafloor, from 774 to 6,348 meters (about 0.5 to 4.0 miles).

The researchers stated they found around 70 new species of small crustaceans called ostracods and about 585 new species of crustaceans similar to pill bugs.

Ostracods, also known as seed shrimp, belong to the class Ostracoda. They are small crustaceans about one millimeter in size but can vary between 0.2 to 30 millimeters. They are often found on or inside the upper layer of the sea floor.

Pill bugs are part of the family Armadillidiidae. They are a family of wood lice, which are often also nicknamed roly-polies because they can roll into a ball. The common pill bug is scientifically named Armadillidium vulgare.

This surprising finding now have scientists curious as to what these species live off of so far into the depths of the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. Brigitte Ebbe, of the Senckenberg Research Institute (Bonn, Germany), one of the team members, stated, “The take-home message is that there is no place on this Earth that is not teeming with life.” [Science News, May 19, 2007, page 303.]