Distributional records of Ross Sea (Antarctica) planktonic Copepoda from bibliographic data and samples curated at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA)

Sampling event
Latest version published by Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa) on Jul 9, 2020 Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa)
Publication date:
09 July 2020
License:
CC-BY 4.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 758 records in English (169 KB) - Update frequency: unknown
Metadata as an EML file download in English (22 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (21 KB)

Description

This dataset gathers distributional data on planktonic copepods (Crustacea, Copepoda) collected in the framework of the III, V and X Expeditions of the Italian National Antarctic Program (PNRA) held in the western Ross Sea from 1987 to 1995. Sampling was conducted with BIONESS and WP2 net in 94 different sampling stations, mainly distributed in the Terra Nova Bay area, at the depth of 0-1000 meters. In terms of spatial coverage, this dataset covers 6027 distributional records that are also reported in terms of original abundance data (ind/m3) to allow a possible modelization of species distributions thanks to the availability of environmental variables that were collected together with the biological samples. The total of distributional records here reported has two different origins: 5306 are represented by bibliographic records obtained by digitizing the original data reports, whereas 721 correspond to physical museum vouchers, now curated by the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa). This group of museum samples comprises 8225 individual specimens, that were identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level. They belong to 4 orders, 25 families, 52 genera and 82 species, out of which 17 could be only determined at the genus level.

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 758 records.

1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

Event (core)
758
Occurrence 
6027

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: b212e93b-7800-4b05-8e2d-5f26798f5002.  Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Section of Genoa) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Keywords

Occurrence; Copepoda; distribution; abundance; BIONESS; Antarctica; Ross Sea; Terra Nova Bay

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

Contacts

Guido Bonello
  • Originator
Collaborator
Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa)
Genoa
IT
Marco Grillo
  • Originator
Collaborator
Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa)
Genoa
IT
Matteo Cecchetto
  • Originator
PhD Student
Department of Earth, Environmental and Life Science (DISTAV), University of Genoa
Genoa
IT
Stefano Schiaparelli
  • Metadata Provider
  • Curator
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
MNA Director - Associate Professor
Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa)
Genoa
IT

Geographic Coverage

The study area covers a high portion of the northwestern Ross Sea, spanning from the Drygalski Ice Tongue in Terra Nova Bay to the continental slope surrounding the Central Basin. Some sampling stations exceed the Antarctic circle to reach the Balleny Islands and the northwestern stretch of sea.

Bounding Coordinates South West [-75.406, -177.742], North East [-61.991, 161.829]

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1988-01-05 / 1995-02-11

Project Data

No Description available

Title Distributional records of Ross Sea (Antarctica) planktonic Copepoda from bibliographic data and samples curated at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA): check-list of species collected in the Terra Nova Bay area (western Ross Sea) from 1987 to 1995.
Funding Data originated in the framework of the first three Italian Antarctic Oceanographic expeditions carried out from 1988 to 1995 within 3 different research projects funded by the PNRA and two collaboration contracts funded by the MNA (Section of Genoa): - Zooplancton - distribuzione spaziale e verticale delle comunità zooplanctoniche nella Baia di Terra Nova (Mare di Ross) con particolare riferimento al Krill 2.1.4.2, III Italian Antarctic expedition (1987/1988) – Scientific coordinator Prof. Mauro Fabiano - Campagna oceanografica nel mare di Ross con la R/V Cariboo, V Italian Antarctic expedition (1989/1990) – Scientific coordinator Prof. Letterio Guglielmo - Ecologia zooplancton e micronecton 6.9, X Italian Antarctic expedition (1994-1995) – Scientific coordinator Dr. Riccardo Cattaneo-Vietti
Design Description The oldest records of the dataset correspond to samples collected during the III Italian Antarctic expedition in 1987-1988, only two years after the opening of the Italian research station Mario Zucchelli (still called “Terra Nova” at that time). This was also the first Italian Antarctic oceanographic expedition, carried out on board of the RV “Polar Queen”. Since this was the first expedition to the region and since there was practically no previous information on the study site, the objective of this expedition was to define the spatial and temporal variability of physical, chemical and biological characteristics in this area (Faranda et al. 2000) with most of the sampling being carried out at Terra Nova Bay. The line of research on zooplankton developed for this peculiar expedition engaged a lot of researchers and pursued the development of a first characterization of the community structure, on the taxonomic, spatial and ecological aspects for the region(Carli et al. 1990, Guglielmo et al. 1990, McKenzie et al. 1990, Zunini Sertorio et al. 1990). The second oceanographic expedition (V Italian Antarctic Expedition) took place 2 years later on board of the RV “Cariboo” and investigated a larger geographic area in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, starting from 50 degrees south to the Balleny Islands and finally reaching Terra Nova bay. The larger scale of the geographic study site reflected the more ambitious (compared to the first expedition) objectives of the expedition, defined to a better understanding of the functioning of the Antarctic pelagic ecosystem, through the study of hydrodynamic features (Faranda et al. 2000) in an area characterized by water mass distribution associated with frontal systems. Within this framework, the study of zooplanktonic communities would allow a better characterization of the effects of these abiotic features on the trophic structure (Benassi et al. 1992, Carli et al. 1992, Guglielmo et al. 1992, Zunini Sertorio et al. 1992). Finally, the third oceanographic expedition (X Italian Antarctic Expedition) was carried out during the austral summer of 1994-1995 on board of the RV “Italica”. Most of the sampling was carried out along the 175° meridian, from the northern continental slope to the ross sea ice shelf, with only a small group of sampling stations located nearshore in Terra Nova Bay (which are the only one included in this dataset). The main purpose of the expedition was to furtherly investigate the effects of ice-edge retreat on primary production (Faranda et al. 2000). As part of the project, the coastal zooplankton community structure, as well as an evaluation of the biomass and lipid content of the total zooplankton, was examined (Carli et al. 2002, Pane et al. 2004).

The personnel involved in the project:

Guido Bonello
  • Author
Marco Grillo
  • Author
Matteo Cecchetto
  • Author
Marina Giallain
  • Author
Letterio Guglielmo
  • Author
Luigi Pane
  • Author
Stefano Schiaparelli
  • Author

Sampling Methods

Most samples composing this dataset were collected using a BIONESS, a zooplankton sampler consisting of multiple (usually ten) nets, stacked horizontally, that opened and closed, by an on-board operator, at desired depths while the instrument was towed by a vessel (ICES 2000). Due to the exceptional filtration to mouth area ratio (10:1), a 90% filtration efficiency can be reached for a clean net towed at 1.5 m s-1. Zooplankton samples are collected in dedicated cod-end numbered buckets for the subsequent handling and processing. During the PNRA expeditions environmental data were acquired by a multiparametric probe fixed on the BIONESS that recorded: temperature, salinity, depth, speed, in- and out-flow through the net, filtration efficiency and net number. Another sampling device employed during these PNRA activities was the WP2 (Working Party II) standardized net. This net had a 57 cm (0,25 m2) opening and length of 2,6 m which, combined with a 200/250 µm mesh width, offers high efficiency while performing vertical samplings of mesozooplankton (Fraser 1966, ICES 2000).

Study Extent The study of the copepods in the Ross Sea has been one of the earliest scientific efforts and main aims of the first oceanographic expeditions of the Italian National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), which started in 1985. In fact, during the III (1987-88), the V (1989-90), and the X (1994-95) oceanographic expeditions, an extensive amount of biological and environmental data was acquired at the same sampling stations in a collaborative framework.
Quality Control All data were gathered in a single dataset which was formatted in order to fulfill the Darwin Core standard protocol (Wieczorek et al. 2012) required by the OBIS scheme (http://www.iobis.org/manual/lifewatchqc/) and according to the SCAR-MarBIN Data Toolkit (http://www.scarmarbin.be/documents/SM-FATv1.zip). The dataset was uploaded and integrated with the ANTOBIS database (the geospatial component of SCAR-MarBIN). All taxonomy was checked and updated through WoRMS (Horton et al. 2019, World Register of Marine Species; http://www.marinespecies.org; last accessed 02 December 2019). Different control and data-cleaning steps have been undertaken, where possible, in order to increase data quality (fare riferimento al flow chart). The map was produced using the collection of dataset “Quantarctica” (Matsuoka et al. 2018) and QGIS (QGIS Development Team 2020). The Darwin Core elements included in the dataset are: occurrenceID, BasisOfRecord (HumanObservation for the bibliographic records and PreservedSpecimen for the museum specimen records), type (identifying the nature of the resource), scientificName (the name in the lowest taxonomic rank identified and updated according to WoRMS with authorship and date for the records identified at the species level), order, family, genus, specificEpithet, scientificNameAuthorship (corresponding to the updated taxonomy according to WoRMS, together with the previous four elements), originalNameUsage (the original identification as reported in the bibliographic resource), identificationQualifier (the qualifier for the uncertainty of identification), scientificNameID (the globally unique identifier for the taxonomic information related to the scientificName and stored in WoRMS), taxonRemarks (notes and considerations regarding the taxonomy of the record), organismQuantity, organismQuantityType (the type of quantification system used, such as the number of individuals or abundance per 100 or one cubic metre), sex, lifeStage (following the controlled vocabulary ‘BODC parameter semantic model biological entity development stage terms‘ at https://github.com/nvs-vocabs/S11), occurrenceRemarks (name of the PNRA research expedition), fieldNumber (name of the sampling station and net number, separated by an underscore), eventDate (date of the sampling event), decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, minimumDepthInMeters, maximumDepthInMeters, sampleSizeValue (the number of cubic meters filtered by the net as reported in the bibliographic resource), sampleSizeUnit, samplingProtocol (following the controlled vocabulary at http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/B07/current/, Wiebe et al. 2014), eventRemarks (name of the sampling gear as reported in the bibliographic reference and mesh size of the net, separated by a pipe), associatedReferences (bibliographic reference associated to the resource), preparations (following ‘Documentation for code table SPECIMEN_PART_NAME’ at http://arctos.database.museum/info/ctDocumentation.cfm?table=CTSPECIMEN_PART_NAME), catalogNumber (museum voucher code for the specimen). Most of the sampling stations have two sets of coordinates: the starting and ending points. In such cases, the coordinates reported in the dataset refer to the starting point of the sampling event. Some museum records do not report the net number. For these records, the minimum depth has been omitted, while for the maximum depth has been reported the value registered for the corresponding sampling station.

Method step description:

  1. All the literature occurrences (defined by the term ‘HumanObservation’ under the column ‘BasisOfRecord’) were manually extracted from five different data reports published in 1990, 1992 and 2002 (Carli et al. 1990, 1992, 2002, Zunini Sertorio et al. 1990, 1992). The information regarding the sampling events for the III and V Italian Antarctic expeditions (e.g. sampling station coordinates, depth, volume filtered, etc.) was manually extracted from two other data reports (Guglielmo et al. 1990, 1992). The general characteristics of the sampling events are here reported (Supplementary material 1) with starting and ending coordinates along with information on the subsequent samples handling (e.g. aliquot examined). All the natural collection occurrences (defined by the term ‘PreservedSpecimen’ under the column ‘BasisOfRecord’) correspond to a portion of the entire batch of samples collected during the III and V expeditions, acquired by the MNA. The recent taxonomic revision was carried out by GB and MC mainly focusing on those samples for which no sorting at the species level was carried on, for example for those which originated from the first net (usually denoted with the number ‘0’) of the Bioness. This net is deployed open from the surface and closed once at the predetermined starting depth for the second net (denoted with the number ‘1’) (Wiebe et al. 2014). The collected samples were initially fixed in 4% formalin and later transferred in pure Ethanol. As the two different kind of distributional data (e.g. preserved specimens and human observation) originated from the same sampling events, but were generated by multiple groups of researchers in different years, an apparent conflict might derive from multiple records sharing the same taxonomic, event (e.g. sampling station, depth, etc.) and organism quantity information. However, most of the literature occurrences were reported with abundance measures, whereas all the preserved specimen records were reported with the number of individuals, originated by a merely qualitative approach and from different aliquots with respect to the ones used by the original authors. Some bibliographic records from the V expedition were originally reported with the number of individuals (Zunini Sertorio et al. 1992), instead of an abundance measure. Nevertheless, for the same reason mentioned earlier, being different the aliquots examined, the conflict still doesn’t arise. Moreover, the number of individuals reported for these particular bibliographic records can still be converted in abundance measures, as the authors of the original bibliographic reference provided the volumetric information on the aliquot examined, here reported as well

Collection Data

Collection Name Copepoda collection of the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA)
Parent Collection Identifier Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa, Italy)
Specimen preservation methods Alcohol

Additional Metadata