Natural climate change at late Cenozoic, caused by Milankovitch cycles, led to the change in ecological predator-prey conditions: the exclusion of sharks, crabs and many groups of teleosts from Antarctic waters, which meant a return to the conditions of Paleozoic living, generating singular benthic communities, dominated by annelids and echinoderms.
This ophiura has no chance to survive
Global climate change, anthropogenic, supposes a drastic change in the status with the invasion of durophagous (king crabs), that causes a predation on exoskeleton zoological groups, and, thus, there can occur a reversion of the ecological and evolutionary conditions, when the Antarctic waters would come back to Cenozoic conditions to recover time lost and to lose its uniqueness compared to other planetary ocean waters. Such an achievement for the human being.
©Rafael Martín-Ledo 2010
References
Aronson RB, Blake D (2001) Global Climate Change and the Origin of Modern Benthic Communities in Antarctica AMER. ZOOL., 41:27–39
Aronson RB, Thatje S, Clarke A, Peck LlS, Blake DB, Wilga ChD,Seibel BA (2007) Climate Change and Invasibility of the Antarctic Benthos Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 38:129–54
Thatje S, Hillenbrand CD, Larter R (2005) On the origin of Antarctic marine benthic community structure TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.20 No.10
