Biological and chemical diversity in Antarctica: from new species to new natural products

Abstract

Antarctica is a still unexplored area in many respects, among which biological diversity and, even more so, chemical diversity are important challenges. Over recent years, our research group has been studying marine benthic ecosystems in different Antarctic areas. These studies yielded several interesting discoveries, including species new to science, as well as new natural products never seen before. Overall, we have been trying to unravel the complex network of interactions that exist between marine benthic organisms in these cold and hardly accessible ecosystems. We present here an overview of our recent results regarding the biological and the chemical diversity of these organisms. In fact, these ecosystems are as complex as many other marine environments on the planet, and indeed, many questions remain yet to be answered.

Keywords:

• Marine benthos
• chemical ecology
• benthic invertebrates
• polar ecology
• biodiversity

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the research teams participating in the ECOQUIM (REN2002-12,006-E/ANT, REN2003-00,545, and CGL2004-03,356/ANT), ACTIQUIM (CGL2007-65,453/ANT; CTM2010-17,415/ANT), ACTIQUIMWHALES (CTM2008-03,135-E/ANT) and DISTANTCOM (CTM2013-42,667/ANT) projects, funded by the Spanish Government, particularly C. Angulo, M. Bas, J. Cristobo, B. Figuerola, J. Moles, L. Núñez-Pons, A. Riesgo, P. Ríos and S. Taboada. AntEco, a SCAR program on the State of the Antarctic Ecosystem, is also acknowledged.