PLoS ONE: Marine Biodiversity and Biogeography - Regional Comparisons of Global Issues

Through a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, the Census of Marine Life (2000-2010) has engaged in a coordinated scientific program to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. One approach was a review of the known with a discussion of the unknown. As part of this effort, participating nations and regions generated new syntheses of marine biodiversity knowledge in their adjacent waters. These summaries are collected here. Each paper describes the physical, geological, chemical, and biological characteristics of the region, provides a brief history of research and species discovery, and gives insight into the role of Census activities in promoting and synthesizing this information. These articles bring together teams of regional experts to identify strengths and gaps in taxonomic capacity and ecological knowledge, potential focal areas for biodiversity research, and threats to marine biodiversity that span fishing disturbance, habitat destruction, invasive species, pollutants, and climate change. They provide species inventories and document patterns of endemism within different taxa, and they identify biogeographic regions and taxonomic groups with the greatest potential to yield new discovery. Individually these articles provide insights that can reveal regional needs and promising directions for future research; collectively they establish a baseline for further global assessments and identify mechanisms for future international collaboration. The collection includes two overview articles: an introduction (O'Dor et al.) and a global synthesis (Costello et al.) of the national and regional articles that follow.

Articles are presented in order of publication date, and new articles will be added to the collection as they are published.

Image Credit: Mike Strong and Maria-Ines Buzeta

Collection Citation: PLoS ONE: Marine Biodiversity and Biogeography – Regional Comparisons of Global Issues (2010) PLoS Collections: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/issue.pcol.v02.i09

 

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