Biodiversity of Antarctic echinoids: a comprehensive and interactive database

Abstract

Eighty-one echinoid species are present south of the Antarctic Convergence, and they represent an important component of the benthic fauna. “Antarctic echinoids” is an interactive database synthesising the results of more than 100 years of Antarctic expeditions, and comprising information about all echinoid species. It includes illustrated keys for determination of the species, and information about their morphology and ecology (text, illustrations and glossary) and their distribution (maps and histograms of bathymetrical distribution); the sources of the information (bibliography, collections and expeditions) are also provided. All these data (taxonomic, morphologic, geographic, bathymetric…) can be interactively queried in two main ways: (1) display of listings that can be browsed, sorted according to various criteria, or printed; and (2) interactive requests crossing the different kinds of data. Many other possibilities are offered, and an on-line help file is also available.