Comparing Sea Anemone Diversity in the Arctic and Antarctic Justin Buck and Daphne Fautin Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas Natural History Museum ( /inverts/Image/)

What is a Sea Anemone? Benthic marine animal in the order Actiniaria Found at all depths in every ocean in the world (

Benthic Animal Diversity Trends “The Antarctic has much higher species richness yet lacks the ecological diversity of the Arctic” (Dayton, et al., 1994: p. 90) GroupAntarcticArctic Mollusks Polychaetes Isopoda29949 Sponges Sea Anemones ?? Number of Recorded Benthic Species for Certain Groups in Arctic and Antarctic (Barry & Grebmeier, 1991)

Hexacorallians of the World Website created in Daphne Fautin’s lab

Preliminary Data More diversity is shown in Arctic than Antarctic What will normalizations do to this data?

Normalizations Area : –Arctic and Antarctic Oceans Effort –Number of publications –Number of Expeditions ( /challenger_ /challenger.html ) (

Area Normalization Used data in latitudinal ranges from 50º-90º North and South The Arctic Ocean is about 1/4 th the size of the Antarctic Ocean (Garrison, 1996) (

Publication Normalization Relationship of genera per publication and species per publication

Expeditions Normalization There have been 4 times more expeditions to the Arctic than to the Antarctic

Summary of Normalizations Area –Arctic greater diversity Publications –Arctic species greater diversity –Antarctic genera greater diversity Expeditions –Antarctic greater diversity

Original descriptions per year

Conclusion The Arctic seems to be much more diverse than the Antarctic GroupAntarcticArctic Mollusks Polychaetes Isopoda29949 Sponges Sea Anemones 76189

Further Study Compare diversity of sea anemones in every ocean in the world Compare the diversity at different depths as well

Acknowledgments Suman Kansakar Ha-Rim ChaAbby Reft Matt Kost Bryan TangneyAmanda Schmidt P.E.E.T. Grant