Claudio Ghiglione

Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa)

In polar areas, where benthic sampling is con- strained by a series of limitations imposed by climate and logistic challenges, knowledge about the key elements required to plan a successful survey is fundamental. Dur- ing the International Polar Year (IPY, 2007/2008), under the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), new sam- pling campaigns were u...

The Latitudinal Gradient Program (2002–2011) aimed at understanding the marine and terrestrial ecosystems existing along the Victoria Land coast (Ross Sea), an area characterized by strong latitudinal clines in environmental factors. During the program’s voyage of the Italian RV ‘‘Italica’’ in 2004, a fine-mesh towed gear, the ‘‘Rauschert dredge’’,...

Information regarding the molluscs in this dataset is based on the Rauschert dredge samples collected during the Latitudinal Gradient Program (LGP) on board the R/V "Italica" in the Ross Sea (Antarctica) in the austral summer 2004. A total of 18 epibenthic dredge deployments/samplings have been performed at four different locations at depths rangin...

The genus Acesta H. Adams & A. Adams, 1858 (Fam. Limidae) comprises species mainly occurring in the deep sea on hard substrates or canyon walls (Johnson et al. 2013), where hydrodynamic conditions enhance the supply of suspended food. During a survey of Scott and Admiralty seamounts as part of the New Zealand IPY-CAML expedition in 2008, a number o...

New methods for species distribution models (SDMs) utilise presence–absence (PA) data to correct the sampling bias of presence‐only (PO) data in a spatial point process setting. These have been shown to improve species estimates when both datasets are large and dense. However, is a PA dataset that is smaller and patchier than hitherto examined able...

The South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf (SOISS) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was the first MPA to be designated entirely within the high seas and is managed under the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). To assist with research and monitoring of the MPA, an international expedition ('SO-AntEco') was undertak...

This new dataset presents occurrence data for Porifera collected in the Ross Sea, mainly in the Terra Nova Bay area, and curated at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa). Specimens were collected in 331 different sampling stations at depths ranging from 17 to 1,100 meters in the framework of 17 different Italian Antarctic ex...

e distributional records of Ophiuroidea stored at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Sec- tion of Genoa) are presented, corresponding to 1595 individuals that belong to 35 species and 17 genera. Specimens were collected in 106 di erent sampling stations at depths ranging from 21 to 1652 m in the framework of 14 Antarctic expeditions to the...

Historical data sets from vast and relatively inaccessible areas are sources of potentially unique information still valuable for biodiversity studies today. In many research fields, ranging from climate change to projection of species loss, great efforts have been made to integrate historical data sets with recent data to create databases that are...

The South Orkney Islands are a small archipelago located in the Southern Ocean, 375 miles north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2009, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) established the South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf Marine Protected Area (SOISS MPA), the first MPA located entirely...

Sampling activities in extreme environments, such as polar benthic ecosystems, represent an authentic challenge for researchers, showing a variety of logistical difficulties related to the inaccessibility of these areas. In these hostile circumstances, the choice of the gears to deploy is a crucial step, contributing substantially to the maximizati...

This dataset includes information regarding fungal strains collected during several Antarctic expeditions: the Italian National Antarctic Research program (PNRA) expeditions “X” (1994/1995), “XII” (1996/1997), “XVII” (2001/2002), “XIX” (2003/2004), “XXVI” (2010/2011), the Czech “IPY Expedition” (2007–2009) and a number of strains donated by E. Imre...

In recent years, a large international effort has been placed in compiling a complete list of Antarctic mollusc distributional records based both on historical occurrences, dating back to 1899, and on newly collected data. Such dataset is highly asymmetrical in the quality of contained information, due to the variety of sampling gears used and the...

The Ross Sea can be considered, in a biological sense, one of the better-known areas in Antarctica due to the high number of expeditions engaged since 1899. Hundreds of mollusc species have been collected and classified along years in a unique database which is now available for study. The possibility to access such impressive information offers th...

Here we present distributional records for Tanaidacea specimens collected during several Antarctic expeditions to the Ross Sea: the Italian PNRA expeditions (“V”, 1989/1990; “XI”, 1995/1996; “XIV”, 1998/1999; “XIX”, 2003/2004; “XXV”, 2009/2010) and the New Zealand historical (New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, NZOI, 1958-1961) and recent (“TAN040...

Species richness is notoriously an elusive quantity to measure, its perception being confounded by a variety of factors comprising, among others, the scale, extent and grain size chosen in a study. The comparison of species richness between sites/large areas is also a not straightforward task, as very biased results can be produced if specific meth...

In recent years, especially within the Census of marine Life community of researchers, a special effort has been placed in the establishment of reference baselines against which to measure future changes in diversity. For Antarctic molluscs, the SOMBASE is a powerful date base containing all records distributional of Mollusca for the Southern Ocean...

In polar areas, where the structure of marine communities or the biodiversity in general are potentially threatened by temperature increase and climate-driven changes, is of fundamental importance to have solid reference baselines where to measure possible variations in species distributions. For Antarctic molluscs, the SOMBASE, a date base contain...

Antarctica is the harshest place in the world to study marine assemblages. Until recently, most of our species distribution knowledge was based on ‘old’ datasets obtained by historical sampling. Their species records were extrapolated and used to address studies of diversity and distribution of taxa. Few of these studies have a balanced design or a...