IMIS - Marine Research Groups

The BioMAntar intends to foster the interaction among scientists and administrators of the participant countries in order to increase the efforts towards the understanding of Antarctic marine biodiversity. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and more recently Venezuela have undertaken marine biological research work in Antarctica, mainly around the Antarctic Peninsula and Drake Passage, and also these in relation to South America. This work aims to aggregate georeferenced Antarctic marine biodiversity data published by South American scientists, including information in the grey literature (mainly MSc dissertations and PhD thesis found at different regional libraries). So far, the occurrence of 337 species from twenty different phyla has been recorded from the literature. These are mainly from King George Island and other islands from the South Shetlands. The majority of manuscripts relates to Chordata (33.26%), and from these 57% relate to fish, 25% to birds and 7.5% to marine mammals. Other articles report mainly on the following: Annelida (12.8%); Arthropoda (9.7%); Mollusca (9%).