Work Packages

EBA’s key areas of marine, terrestrial and freshwater research will be addressed through five Work Packages, each with defined sub-themes:

Work Package 1: Evolutionary history of Antarctic organisms

  • Vicariance and Radiations: When did the key radiations of Antarctic taxa take place?
  • Impact of glaciation on land (habitat modification/loss and timing and extent of isolation), and at sea (evolutionary links between continental shelf and slope or deep-sea species);
  • Phylogeography: geographical structure and relationships in the Antarctic biome;
  • Evolutionary history of Antarctic micro-organisms (both prokaryotic and eukaryotic).

Contacts for Work Package 1

Work Package 2: Evolutionary adaptation to the Antarctic environment

  • Limits to organism performance: adaptation to the Antarctic environment constraining physiological performance;
  • Physiological and genomic adaptations that allow organisms to survive in the Antarctic: the extent to which these are special to the Antarctic or simply variants of more general adaptations exhibited by organisms elsewhere;
  • Ability of Antarctic organisms to cope with daily, seasonal and longer-term environmental changes;
  • Behavioural and morpho-functional adaptations;
  • Adaptation and plasticity (genotype and phenotype).

Contacts for Work Package 2

Work Package 3: Patterns of gene flow and consequences for population dynamics: Isolation as a driving force

  • Population structure and dynamics in the context of evolutionary biology;
  • Natural and anthropogenic dispersal processes: immigration and emigration of organisms; intra-Antarctic dispersal; the role of advective/transport processes in gene flow and population structure;
  • Genetic structure of populations: differences among and between Antarctic and non-Antarctic populations;
  • The extent to which populations of Antarctic organisms exist as metapopulations.

Contacts for Work Package 3

Work Package 4: Patterns and diversity of organisms, ecosystems and habitats in the Antarctic, and controlling processes

  • Spatial and temporal variations in diversity: variation of diversity at different spatial scales within the Antarctic and within defined time frames;
  • Response to latitudinal and environmental gradients: local, regional and global;
  • Radiations: history of key evolutionary radiations in the Antarctic;
  • Unknown areas: patterns of diversity and biotic composition of unexplored but important areas (e.g. deep sea, inland nunataks, subglacial lakes).

Contacts for Work Package 4

Work Package 5: Impact of past, current and predicted future environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem function

  • Interactions between introduced and indigenous species in selected environments under climate change;
  • Effect of abiotic change on biota;
  • Modelling interactions between environmental change and organism responses in order to predict biotic change;
  • Impact of biological feedback on climate.

Contacts for Work Package 5




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