My PhD project pretends to cover existing knowledge gaps in soft-bottom benthic communities’ species composition and ecological functioning of the north-eastern Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean in a context of rapid environmental change. A part of the study, associated to the Nansen Legacy Project (AeN), is dedicated to investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of macrobenthic diversity and community respiration processes in a year-round basis to describe baseline seasonal patterns through sediment incubation experiments. Another part of the project will be focused on a time-series study in Rijpfjord, north of Svalbard, where soft-bottom macrofauna samples taken throughout the last two decades will be analyzed to describe potential community shifts in biological structure and functional traits in a rapidly changing Arctic.​