Researchers at the University of Barcelona embark on a new research campaign in the Antarctica

To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project. Photo: C. Àvila
To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project. Photo: C. Àvila
Research
(06/11/2015)

When we think about Antarctic fauna, penguins and seals come to our minds, but the survival of these and the rest of Antarctic animals depends on other links of the food chain that remain quite unknown, for example the invertebrates that inhabit the sea floor. To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project, led by Conxita Àvila, researcher in the Department of Animal Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona. The project also aims at identifying the molecules that take part in ecological relationships and assessing their potential pharmacological effects.

To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project. Photo: C. Àvila
To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project. Photo: C. Àvila
Research
06/11/2015

When we think about Antarctic fauna, penguins and seals come to our minds, but the survival of these and the rest of Antarctic animals depends on other links of the food chain that remain quite unknown, for example the invertebrates that inhabit the sea floor. To study marine invertebrate communities that compose the marine benthos is the main objective of the DISTANTCOM project, led by Conxita Àvila, researcher in the Department of Animal Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona. The project also aims at identifying the molecules that take part in ecological relationships and assessing their potential pharmacological effects.

The project sets up a new Antarctic campaign in December. Besides researchers from the University of Barcelona, experts at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH), the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and Harvard University participate in the campaign too. The research team will move to the Gabriel de Castilla Spanish Antarctic base, located on Deception Island, in the South Shetland Archipelago, where they will study chemical ecology, philogeny, phylogeography and trophic ecology of Antarctic invertebrates for three months. A great part of the campaign will be developed on board the oceanographic vessel BIO Hespérides. Researchers will collect samples from different regions of the Antarctic Peninsula and adjacent islands.

Professor Àvila explains: "We will try to know better the life of animals inhabiting Antarctic sea floor: what trophic relationships do they have —in other words, who eats who—, what symbiotic relationships do they establish and what pollutants they accumulate. We also want to know their family relations in order to build the family tree of some species and what factors have determined their present distribution". Information about species ecological features is relevant because it allows detecting environmental changes in an indirect way and may play a major role in the study of climate change.

 

In a search for new bioactive substances

The project includes the study of invertebrate chemical ecology and the potential pharmacological applications of their molecules. "We will try to guess what chemical defences they use to repel predators, carve a niche or keep clean and avoid other organisms adhering to their surface", points out the researcher. "These chemical products —she explains— may also have a potential biological activity as drugs.  For example, the compound that avoids the spread of enemy cells may be used to avoid the development of cancer cells".

The campaign is divided in different parts, which include an experimental phase, carried out mainly in the Gabriel de Castilla base, and a sampling phase in which researchers will board the oceanographic vessel BIO Hespérides. Diving sampling techniques with dry suit will be used to withstand temperatures of -1.8 degrees.

"Invertebrate ecology is quite unknown, particularly due to extreme weather conditions and logistical problems of the Southern Ocean. For that reason we profit the austral summer, when weather conditions are favourable, says Àvila, who will participate in her eighth Southern Ocean campaign.

The DISTANTCOM project is the continuation of Ecoquim and Actiquim projects, which were also developed by the research team and led by Conxita Àvila. Researchers at the University of Barcelona and the IRBio have made other significant discoveries of Antarctic marine invertebrates, for example the bone-eating worm of the genus Osedax, the nemertean Antarctonemertes riesgoae, which has a unique reproductive strategy, and the annelid Parougia diapason, a new species discovered on Deception Island (South Shetland Islands), in the Southern Ocean.