Due to the extreme climate conditions the mainland of the Antarctic continent has been able to withstand exaggerated exploitatioin of resources which is been found in many other places of this planet. The inaccessibility has yielded in many undisturbed areas with still intact but fragile ecosystems with distinct and unique species composition. One recent survey has revealed very high percentage of endemic species that have evolved independentely of the life of the other continents for many million years. This is especially true for the bdelloid rotifers which have been covered in the paper of Iakovenko et al. (2015): "Antarctic bdelloid rotifers: diversity, endemism and evolutiion" (Hydrobiologia 2015). As a supplement to this paper some more images of the species described in the paper are presented here.

I would like to thank Dr. N. Iakovenko (Ostrava; Czech Republic) and Dr. K. Janko (Libechov, Czech Republic) for providing samples and Dr. N. Iakovenko for helping in the identification of the species.