Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Íris Sampaio (irisfs@gmail.com)
Received: 12 Jun 2019 | Published: 19 Jun 2019
© 2019 Íris Sampaio, Telmo Morato, Filipe Porteiro, Cristina Gutiérrez-Zárate, Gerald Taranto, Christopher Pham, João Gonçalves, Marina Carreiro-Silva
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Sampaio Í, Morato T, Porteiro F, Gutiérrez-Zárate C, Taranto G, Pham C, Gonçalves J, Carreiro-Silva M (2019) The Value of a Deep-Sea Collection of the Azores (NE Atlantic Ocean): Marine invertebrate biodiversity in an era of global environmental change. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3: e37209. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37209
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The deep ocean is the largest and least explored biome with the highest richness of species and phylogenetic biodiversity on Earth. The high costs of using sophisticated technological means to access deep-sea ecosystems gives an inestimable value to specimens collected in these environments. Azorean scientists have long started collaborating with fishermen to collect deep-sea marine invertebrate fauna accidentally captured during fishing activities, thus obtaining deep-sea organisms opportunistically. Specimens have been stored and catalogued at the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries – University of the Azores’ Marine Biological Reference Collection (COLETA) since 2006. The collection has been continuously growing through oceanographic cruises and fisheries observer programs in the framework of several national and international collaborations. Currently, COLETA has 14367 specimens and samples corresponding to 10827 databased entries representing mostly corals (3415) and sponges (1941) of the deep sea (Fig.
Curated collections and datasets based on vouchered records, which can be continuously consulted, are essential to study deep-sea biodiversity. A continuously growing collection has also the potential of adding a time frame to the study of the impact of climate change, fishing and pollution on the deep-sea. In an era of biodiversity loss, COLETA represents a good example of where physical specimens and associated metadata databases can be combined to research and discover species, to achieve ecosystem conservation and guide marine spatial planning.
collection, deep sea, invertebrates, marine biodiversity, vulnerable marine ecosystems
Íris Sampaio
Biodiversity_Next 2019