Environmental Genomics and Biodiversity of Macro- and Microbenthic Communities in the Red Sea Coast of Jeddah City

Abstract

Kingdom of Saud Arabia covers about 80% of Arabian Peninsula; it occupies an area of about 2,250,000 square kilometers (El Raey, 2010). The country has an arid climate with an average annual rainfall of 70.5 mm along the broad coastal Tihamah plains of Red Sea (Hariri, 2012). The largest section of Saudi Arabian's Red Sea coastline (Figure 1) extends about 1800 km to the west; from Jordan to Yemen (Khalil, 2017). The Red Sea is a young environment that began to form after the northeast African continental crust began to divide and drift eastward (Berumen et al, 2019). The present dimensions and structure of the Red Sea are the result of a combination of geological and climatic processes, including the spreading between the African and Arabian plates, associated volcanism in the midTertiary, and eustatic sea-level fluctuations (Di Battista et al., 2016). Tertiary faulting in the area between Africa and Arabia led to the formation of the Red Sea rift. Red Sea Red Sea Mountains are characterized by a steep western edge and a gently east-dipping Arabian Shield. The landmass lies between the mid-latitudes; in a typically arid area dependent on winter rains in the north and monsoon winds in the south.