Please note that final assignment is subject to the student qualifying for FWS Placement. If a student is allowed to work without having a FWS Referral Form signed by all parties and on file in this office, your department will be responsible for compensating the student.
Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there, including many types of algae, animals (for example mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades), bacteria, fungi, plants, and protista.
Cold, hostile and uninhabited by humans, it is home to birds and mammals such as penguins, whales and seals â many of which are found nowhere else. The continent is an island, surrounded entirely by the Southern Ocean, which is often covered in ice but is biologically rich in marine life. Critical to sustaining this unique ecosystem is krill, a small crustacean that is significant to the entire Antarctic food web.