phoxocephalid amphipod Heterophoxus videns

Heterophoxus videns is found in Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, South Shetland Islands, South Orkney Islands, South Georgia Island, Falkland Islands, Chile, and Argentina at depths from 2 to 457 meters [2,4,5]. H. videns has been collected at lengths up to one centimeter [6]. The family Phoxocephalidae are gammaridean amphipods with their head produced into a hood-like rostrum overhanging the antennae, a well-developed accessory flagellum on the first antennae, and pereopods armed with spines and setae for burrowing into soft bottom sediments [2]. A terminal stage male is shown here [3]. At twenty meters depth at McMurdo jetty, a density of 6,367 H. videns per square meter was observed; it is less abundant in the shallower anchor ice zone [1].

Heterophoxus videns is a motile deposit feeder and predator, living buried just below the sediment surface and rarely emerging [1]. H. videns eats polychaete worms (including Spiophanes tcherniai, Tharyx sp., Haploscoloplos kerguelensis, maldanids or oweniids), nematodes, copepods, ostracods (including Philomedes sp.), sponges, and diatoms [1,7]. H. videns is a dominant species in the McMurdo jetty soft-bottom macrofaunal community and is a foundation species for the ecological community there, regulating species composition and population size (age) structure by preying on small species and small individuals of large species [1]. H. videns is eaten by Trematomus fish which are hunt-and-peck predators [1]. A pre-terminal stage male is shown here [3].

1: Ophelia 24(3):155-175, 1985; 2: The Amphipod Family Phoxocephalidae in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, with Analyses of Other Species and Notes for a Revision of the Family. JL Barnard. Allan Hancock Pacific Expeditions Volume 18, Number 3. Los Angeles : University of Southern California Press, 1960; 3: Kathleen Conlan, personal communication, 1999; 4: Catalogue of the Marine Gammaridean Amphipoda of the Southern Ocean. JK Lowry, S Bullock. Wellington : Royal Society of New Zealand, 1976. Royal Society of New Zealand Bulletin 16; 5: The Crustacea Amphipoda of Signy Island, South Orkney Islands. MH Thurston. British Antarctic Survey Scientific Reports, Number 71, 1972; 6: Adaptations within Antarctic Ecosystems : Proceedings of the Third SCAR Symposium on Antarctic Biology. George A. Llano, ed. Washington : Smithsonian Institution ; Houston, Tex. : distributed by Gulf Pub. Co., 1977. pp. 327-334; 7: Polar Biology 24(9):657-662, 2001

Text ©Peter Brueggeman. Photographs ©Canadian Museum of Nature (Kathleen Conlan). Photographs may not be used in any form without the express written permission of Canadian Museum of Nature (Kathleen Conlan).