Meeting Abstract
Pycnogonids (sea spiders) are widely distributed globally and are a speciose, basal class of chelicerates within Arthropoda. They are especially abundant and diverse in the Southern Ocean and many species are reported to have a circumpolar distribution despite their brooding reproductive patterns. Nymphon australe is the most commonly found species of Pycnogonida in the Southern Ocean and more than a quarter of all Nymphon species are present in Antarctic waters. Previous studies on the population structure of N. australe using two mtDNA loci have shown large-scale population connectivity patterns across three circumpolar geographic areas around Antarctica. However, recent developments using RADseq for acquisition of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has shown the ability to investigate whole genomes for fine scale population differences. To investigate the population structure of N. australe on a finer scale than in previous studies, SNP data was analyzed via 2b-RAD sequencing methods from samples collected throughout the western Antarctic. We hypothesize that with the finer resolution of the SNP data from throughout the genome of N. australe that structure will be more defined than in previous studies using mitochondrial data alone.
