Farah Amjad, Mohamed Ahusan, Hana Amir, Nina M de Villiers, Erika Gress, Christopher L Mah, Shafiya Naeem, Nuria Rico-Seijo, Toufiek Samaai, Maryiam S Afzal, Lucy C Woodall, Paris V Stefanoudis
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: During the 2022 Nekton Maldives Mission, we deployed a variety of platforms (snorkelling, remotely-operated vehicles and manned submersibles) to conduct video surveys of the biodiversity and composition of shallow (< 30 m), mesophotic (30-150 m) and deep-sea (> 150 m) benthos found in the Maldives' central and southern atolls. In total, ~ 80 hrs of stereo-video footage were collected during the benthic transect surveys, which were subsequently processed using annotation software in order to evaluate benthic biodiversity and community composition. Here, we present a photographic guide for the visual, in situ identification of reef benthos encountered, including corals, sponges and other invertebrates that inhabit Maldives' nearshore habitats. We hope that this identification guide will aid future imagery-based surveys or observations of organisms during fieldwork.
New information: A total of 283 morphotypes were identified, including those belonging to Octocorallia (61), Scleractinia (57), Porifera (38), Asteroidea (22), Antipatharia (15), Decapoda (13), Hydrozoa (12), Holothuroidea (10), Actiniaria (9), Echinoidea (8), Annelida (6), Chlorophyta (5), Gastropoda (4), Bivalvia (4), Ascidiacea (3), Crinoidea (3), Bryozoa (2), Cyanobacteria (2), Zoantharia (2), Cephalopoda (1), Ceriantharia (1), Corallimorpharia (1), Ctenophora (1), Ophiuroidea (1), Rhodophyta (1) and to an unknown category (1). Out of these, we identified 40 to species level, 120 to genus, 47 to family, 14 to order and suborder, 58 to class and subclass, two to phylum and one was of unknown phylum. This represents the first attempt to catalogue the mesophotic and deep-sea benthic megafaunal diversity in the Maldives using underwater imagery.
Biodiversity Data JournalAgricultural and Biological Sciences-Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
CiteScore
2.20
自引率
7.70%
发文量
283
审稿时长
6 weeks
期刊介绍:
Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) is a community peer-reviewed, open-access, comprehensive online platform, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind. All structural elements of the articles – text, morphological descriptions, occurrences, data tables, etc. – will be treated and stored as DATA, in accordance with the Data Publishing Policies and Guidelines of Pensoft Publishers.
The journal will publish papers in biodiversity science containing taxonomic, floristic/faunistic, morphological, genomic, phylogenetic, ecological or environmental data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world with no lower or upper limit to manuscript size.