Functional group diversity is key to Southern Ocean benthic carbon pathways.

ABSTRACT: High latitude benthos are globally important in terms of accumulation and storage of ocean carbon, and the feedback this is likely to have on regional warming. Understanding this ecosystem service is important but difficult because of complex taxonomic diversity, history and geography of benthic biomass. Using South Georgia as a model location (where the history and geography of benthic biology is relatively well studied) we investigated whether the composition of functional groups were critical to benthic accumulation, immobilization and burial pathway to sequestration-and also aid their study through simplification of identification. We reclassified [1], [2]) morphotype and carbon mass data to 13 functional groups, for each sample of 32 sites around the South Georgia continental shelf. W

SUBMITTER: Barnes DKA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5487044 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature