Trophic Ecology of the Antarctic Nearshore Zone - Stable Isotope datasets

Project Objectives

1. To describe trophic relationships in near shore marine benthic ecosystems of East Antarctica and determine the importance of environmental forces (such as sea ice and primary production) to the structure of food webs and biological interactions in benthic assemblages.

2. To determine how marine benthic food webs in East Antarctica respond to local scale disturbances (such as sewage outfalls and abandoned waste disposal sites) and develop predictive models of the influence of local human activities on trophic relationships.

Collections of organisms from coastal ecosystems around Casey and Davis stations were made between 2006/07 and 2010/11.