Arctic Nights & Jellyfish Lights: A Surprising Survival Feast

AWI research team shows that jellyfish play an important, previously unknown role in the diet of amphipods during the polar night.

The Arctic is changing rapidly due to climate change. It is not only affected by increasing surface temperatures, but also by warm water from the Atlantic, which is flowing in more and more – changing the structures and functions of the ecosystem as it also leads to species from warmer regions, such as jellyfish, arriving in the Arctic.

Using DNA metabarcoding, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now been able to prove for the first time that these jellyfish serve as food for amphipods on Svalbard during the polar night and thus play a greater role in Arctic food webs than previously assumed. They present their findings in a recent article in the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science.