ARCDIV: Up-scaling Arctic diversity analysis to link community organisation and ecosystem functioning
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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.
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