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Recent change in benthic macrofaunal community composition in relation to physical forcing in the Pacific Arctic

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Abstract

There is growing evidence that increased Pacific water transport into the Arctic affects the marine ecosystem. One of the theoretical predictions for a future Arctic characterized by such environmental change is that subarctic taxa will expand northward and invade the native Arctic ecosystem. This study focuses on variation in macrofaunal community composition and the influence of changing physical drivers at known benthic hotspots in the Pacific Arctic. The average number of macrofaunal family-level taxa has increased significantly south of St. Lawrence Island and in the Chirikov Basin, whereas the number of macrofaunal taxa in the southeastern Chukchi Sea showed no significant trend over the 2000–2013 time period. However, the Shannon–Weaver diversity index, based on abundance, did not mirror these regional changes in the number of macrofaunal taxa, indicating that the abundance of newly present taxa was negligible compared to the entire abundance already present. We also investigated temporal variations in meridional sea level gradient and local winds, which contribute 2/3 and 1/3 of the variation in northward volume transport at Bering Strait, respectively. There were significant increasing trends in the meridional sea level gradient and local winds, suggesting the increased northward seawater volume transports over the benthic hotspots could contribute to the expansion of subarctic taxa into these northern Arctic regions. Our data suggest an increase in macrofaunal taxa type with increasing current transport northward into the Pacific Arctic region that could have a strong influence in restructuring the benthic ecosystem in this region in the future.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the individuals and organizations that have contributed to the PacMARS Data Archive and the Arctic Data Center. PI Grebmeier thanks Linton Beaven, Monika Kędra, Stephanie Soques, along with previous technicians, for benthic laboratory analyses for both the PacMARS and additional DBO SWL data sets, along with Alynne Bayard and Chirk Chu for associated data products used in this study. PI Grebmeier and associated team members were supported in this study through grants from the North Pacific Research Program support through the PacMARS project funded by Shell Exploration and Production and ConocoPhillips, and administered and managed by the North Pacific Marine Research Institute (NPMRI Arctic Project A01) through the North Pacific Research Board, NSF Arctic Observing Network program (1204082, 1702456, and 1917469), and NOAA Arctic Research Program (CINAR 22309.02). We also thank Dr. Monika Kędra at the Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences for processing the SWL07 and SWL08 macrofauna samples used in our study through the Polish National Science Centre grant no. DEC 2013/08/M/NZ8/00592. The altimeter products were produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by AVISO. The NCEP NARR data were distributed by the NOAA NOMADS. This study was supported by the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS) Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University, 3-1-1 Minato-cho, Hakodate, Hokkaido, 041-8611, Japan

    Hisatomo Waga & Toru Hirawake

  2. Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons, MD, 20688, USA

    Jacqueline M. Grebmeier

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  1. Hisatomo Waga
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  2. Toru Hirawake
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  3. Jacqueline M. Grebmeier
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Correspondence to Hisatomo Waga.

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Waga, H., Hirawake, T. & Grebmeier, J.M. Recent change in benthic macrofaunal community composition in relation to physical forcing in the Pacific Arctic. Polar Biol 43, 285–294 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02632-3

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