Plate tectonics, topographic structures, ocean currents, and mass extinction: How did these factors shape the current distribution of meiofaunal holobenthic Kinorhyncha in deep-sea basins of the Arctic, Atlantic, and Southern Ocean?

• Applicant: Dr. Hiroshi Yamasaki, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2019 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428950485

About half of the earth’s surface is occupied by the deep sea where several unique organisms and ecosystem are present. Such an uniqueness may have been created by several historical events or geographical movement, e.g., plate tectonics, ocean currents, and mass extinction. Although meiofauna often shows higher biomass and species diversity than macrofauna in the deep-sea floor, the taxonomical, biogeographical and evolutional knowledge of them has been scarcely investigated. The here applied project is based on meiofauna samples of 15 German and 4 US American deep-sea expeditions to the Arctic, Atlantic, and Southern Ocean. The goal of this project is to reveal the mechanisms which created the current deep-sea meiofaunal community by using the meiofaunal group Kinorhyncha. The study will comprehensively cover the above mentioned oceans and identify the kinorhynchs from there at working species level enabling to detect the local/regional/oceanic characteristics of them and to compare the faunae within basins and between basins and adjacent shallow waters. Some materials will be used for molecular phylogenetic analyses in order to detect the relationships among/between deep-sea faunae and shallow water ones. Community structural analyses will be conducted to compare the (dis)similarities of communities within/between regions. These results of the faunistic and phylogenetic comparisons together with the already known knowledge of the historical and geological events in the area will indicate how meiofaunal community developed on the deep-sea floor and which factors affected them. The results of the project shall contribute to the knowledge on the species diversity, the biogeographical characters, and the evolutional history of deep-sea organisms.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants