The loss of sea ice as a result of a warming world has left many Antarctic species fighting for their lives.
Hotter temperatures over the past two decades have allowed massive icebergs to drift free all year long, as opposed to only in the summer, a Cell Press news release reported. As a result, boulders on the ocean floor that once housed a variety number of species have been almost stripped bare.
The rocks now support only one species, with other populations being so low that they are considered to be irrelevant.
"The Antarctic Peninsula can be considered an early warning system-like a canary in a coal mine," David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey, said in the news release. "Physical changes there are amongst the most extreme and the biology considered quite sensitive, so it was always likely to be a good place to observe impacts of climate change-but impacts elsewhere are likely to be not too far behind. A lot of the planet depends on the near-shore environment, not least for food; what happens there to make it less stable is important."
Past studies noticed an increase in mortality in the suspension feeder Fenstrulina rugula; at the time the researchers (correctly) predicted the species' population decline would only become more prevalent.
This new study found that none of these species that were present in 1997 have disappeared completely, but the majority has become so scarce that they barely play a role in the ecosystem.
In 2013, 96 percent of interactions in the region were between F. rugula, making it one of the "simplest" seabed systems on the planet.
The researchers were surprised to see such a huge effect take place so quickly.
"Warming is likely to increase ice scour mortality and reduce assemblage complexity and could aid establishment of nonindigenous species," the researchers write in conclusion. "We expect the deeper seabed to become richer in benthic [colonization] with more ice shelf collapses and fast ice losses, but hard surfaces in the shallows are likely to become deserts dominated by rapidly [colonizing] pioneers and responsive scavengers-with little role for spatial competition or even predation in shaping the structure of such assemblages."
