North Atlantic Gateway: test bed of deep-sea macroecological patterns

Aim: The deep waters around Iceland, known as the North Atlantic Gateway, constitute an ideal location to investigate deep-sea ecological hypotheses. Using ostracods, we constructed a comprehensive deep-sea macroecological dataset of the North Atlantic Gateway region and investigated the controlling factors of large-scale, deep-sea species diversity patterns. Location: Sub-polar North Atlantic Ocean Time period: Modern Major taxa studied: Ostracoda (Crustacea) Methods: We investigated deep-sea biodiversity patterns and applied ecological modeling (multiple regression and model averaging) to test whether these patterns are governed by environmental factors such as temperature, surface primary productivity, and seasonality. Beta diversity analyses were applied to evaluate the effect of a geographical barrier (Greenland-Iceland-Faeroe Ridge) on deep-sea benthic faunal distributions. Results: We constructed a deep-sea macroecological dataset with 32 stations, 5676 specimens, and 122 species...