Introduction: Biodiversity and Evolution of Parasitic Life in the Southern Ocean

Abstract

Researchers of various disciplines, including taxonomy, ecology, and physiology, have long been attracted to the Southern Ocean environment that lies at the limits of the physical conditions capable of supporting life and thus constitutes an exceptional ecosystem for undertaking fundamental research on the relationship between the climate and evolutionary processes (Clarke et al. 2007a) and ref. therein, (Ducklow et al. 2007). The establishment of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and its associated oceanographic regime in the Early Cenozoic fostered unique adaptations of both, marine and terrestrial organisms, relatively unaffected by biotic exchange (Clarke et al. 2007a). Low air and water temperatures, lack of coastal zones due to a thick shelf-ice cover, and drifting and stranding of icebergs are only some of those unique environmental features that necessitate special adaptations of terrestrial and marine floral and faunal species to extreme environmental conditions (Klimpel et al. 2010). A particular characteristic in the marine environment is the missing of a strict separation between the continental shelf and the deep-sea, enabling deep-sea species to occur also in shallower waters and especially benthodemersal shallow water species to extend their range into the deep-sea (Klimpel et al. 2010).