A Taxonomic Baseline to Monitor Retreating Arctic Biota: The Marine Invertebrate Collection of the Icelandic Institute of Natural History (IINH)

Abstract

The IINH collection comprises ~5.3 million specimens of marine invertebrates, collected within 758,000 km2 of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Iceland, which is a significant part of the greater Arctic-Boreal biogeographic boundary in the northern Atlantic. The oldest collected specimen is from 1871, but most of the specimens (4.7 million) were collected during the BIOICE project between 1991 and 2004. The program objective is to build a museum collection, reflecting the geographical distribution and morphological variation of benthic species. Over 1,390 zoological samples were collected following a stratified random sampling plan with 579 stations at a depth range of 20 to 3,000 m, and temperatures from −1°C to over +9°C. The material is sorted to about 50 higher taxonomic groups, and 3,007 benthic species, of which fifty-one are new to science. The collection offers a baseline to monitor changing biodiversity at the Arctic-Boreal boundary, with rising temperature, salinity, and acidification.