IMIS

The only Antarctic review about brachiopods has been done by Forster in 1974. Since about 100 publications dealing with living Antarctic brachiopods have been issued and nearly 50 on fossil Antarctic brachiopods, until 2009. The classification of the Brachiopoda has been basically changed in 1996 and developed in the 6 volumes of the “Treatise” (1997-2007). All specialists of living brachiopods are now retired (less than 5!). Consequently, the distributional biodiversity of the extant brachiopods must be stored online as soon a possible. This task will be difficult to be completed in a next future. For the proposed work all the available publications (about 150) on living brachiopods will be analyzed, as well the citations on living forms included in the palaeontological papers. The dataset holds taxonomic and distribution data on Brachiopoda (lamp-shells) from the Antarctic and Subantarctic regions. The sources of the information (bibliography and expeditions) are also provided.