Biodiversity Responses to Earth System Variability: Structure, Function, Change

Abstract

The Antarctic provides unparalleled opportunities for understanding patterns in biodiversity, the mechanisms underlying these patterns, and the way in which biodiversity responds to and modulates environmental change. The latter have been identified as pressing questions for modem earth systems scientists and ecologists1. Our research over the past decade has elucidated patterns in Antarctic biodiversity at large and small spatial scales2-4, has provided comprehensive information on the functional responses of Antarctic terrestrial arthropods to environmental variability5-7 and has started elucidating the biodiversity and conservation consequences of climate change and increases in the numbers of humans travelling to the Antarctic region8-10. In doing so it has also served to inform theory and contribute broadly to ecology, evolutionary physiology and to conservation biology. In a triptych of posters we provide an overview of and insights into these findings.