The lower bathyal and abyssal seafloor fauna of eastern Australia
Timothy D. O’HaraAlan WilliamsS. T. AhyongPhilip AldersladeTom AlvestadDiane BrayIngo BurghardtNataliya BudaevaFrancesco CriscioneAndrea L. CrowtherMerrick EkinsMarc EléaumeCaroline A. FarrellyJulian FinnMagdalena N. GeorgievaAlastair G C GrahamMartin F. GomonKaren Gowlett-HolmesLaetitia M. GuntonAnders HallanAndrew HosiePat HutchingsHiroki KiseFrank KöhlerJ. A. KonsgrudElena K. KupriyanovaC. C. LuMelanie MackenzieChristopher L. MahHugh MacIntoshKelly L. MerrinAshley MiskellyMichela L. MitchellKirrily M. MooreAnna MurrayP. Mark O’LoughlinHannelore PaxtonJohn J. PogonoskiDavid A. StaplesJeanette E. WatsonRobin S. WilsonJ. ZhangNarissa Bax
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Abstract Background Our knowledge of the benthic fauna at lower bathyal to abyssal (LBA, > 2000 m) depths off Eastern Australia was very limited with only a few samples having been collected from these habitats over the last 150 years. In May–June 2017, the IN2017_V03 expedition of the RV Investigator sampled LBA benthic communities along the lower slope and abyss of Australia’s eastern margin from off mid-Tasmania (42°S) to the Coral Sea (23°S), with particular emphasis on describing and analysing patterns of biodiversity that occur within a newly declared network of offshore marine parks. Methods The study design was to deploy a 4 m (metal) beam trawl and Brenke sled to collect samples on soft sediment substrata at the target seafloor depths of 2500 and 4000 m at every 1.5 degrees of latitude along the western boundary of the Tasman Sea from 42° to 23°S, traversing seven Australian Marine Parks. Results The biological sampling included 35 beam trawls, 28 Brenke sleds, 8 box cores, 20 surface meso-zooplankton tows, and 7 Deep Towed Camera transects. In total, 25,710 specimens were identified to 1084 taxonomic entities, including 847 species-level, 144 genus-level and 69 family-level and 24 higher-level taxa. Of the species-level taxa, only 457 were assigned species-level taxonomic names, which implies that up to 58% of the collected fauna is undescribed. In addition, the ranges of numerous species have been extended to include the western Tasman Sea. Conclusions The lower bathyal and abyssal fauna of soft sediment seafloors off eastern Australia has been systematically surveyed for the first time. The resultant collections will provide the foundation for much future ecological, biogeographical, phylogenetic and taxonomic research.Keywords:
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Seafloor Spreading
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Studies of deep-sea biodiversity focus almost exclusively on geographic patterns of ot-diversity. Few include the morphological or ecological properties of species that indicate their actual roles in community assembly. Here, we explore morphological disparity of shell architecture in gastropods from lower bathyal and abyssal environments of the western North Atlantic as a new dimension of deep-sea biodiversity. The lower bathyal-abyssal transition parallels a gradient of decreasing species diversity with depth and distance from land. Morphological disparity measures how the variety of body plans in a taxon fills a morphospace. We examine disparity in shell form by constructing both empirical (eigenshape analysis) and theoretical (Schindel's modification of Raup's model) morphospaces. The two approaches provide very consistent results. The centroids of lower bathyal and abyssal morphospaces are statis- tically indistinguishable. The absolute volumes of lower bathyal morphospaces exceed those of the abyss; however, when the volumes are standardized to a common number of species they are not significantly different. The abyssal morphospaces are simply more sparsely occupied. In terms of the variety of basic shell types, abyssal species show the same disparity values as random subsets of the lower bathyal fauna. Abyssal species possess no evident evolutionary innovation. There are, however, conspicuous changes in the relative abundance of shell forms between the two assemblages. The lower bathyal fauna contains a fairly equable mix of species abundances, trophic modes, and shell types. The abyssal group is numerically dominated by species that are deposit feeders with compact unsculptured shells.
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Prochaetodermatidae is one of the three families of class Caudofoveata (Mollusca). It consists of 39 species belonging to a single genus, Prochaetoderma. Only one species of this genus, Prochaetoderma iberogallicum, have been recorded on Galician bottoms, whereas six species are known from the Iberian Peninsula. The external anatomy and the radula of 26 specimens of Prochaetoderma alleni and one of Prochaetoderma gauson are studied in this paper. The specimens were collected during different oceanographic expeditions conducted by the Estacion de Bioloxia Marina da Grana of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela on bathyal and abyssal bottoms off Galicia. Both species are recorded for the first time on Galician coasts; P. gauson is also a new record for the Iberian Peninsula.
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The diversity of bathyal and abyssal marine organisms is still poorly known and this is especially true for tubicolous polychaetes of the family Serpulidae, the common inhabitants of subtidal and shelf locations. We report herein new records of poorly known deep-sea (mostly below 2000 m) serpulids collected in the Pacific Ocean by early Soviet Oceanographic expeditions onboard R/V “Vityaz”. The following species were found: Bathyditrupa hovei, Bathyvermilia challengeri, B eliasoni, B. zibrowiusi, Filogranula stellata, Hyalopomatus jirkovi, and H. sikorski at the depths of 1600–6330 m. Many samples collected by R/V “Vityaz” and other Russian research vessels are still unstudied and apparently many bathyal and abyssal serpulid species new to science remain undescribed. The diversity of abyssal marine organisms remains poorly known not only because of the obvious logistical difficulties in collecting at abyssal localities, but also in part due to the lack of taxonomic effort directed towards existing research collections.
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Three distinct species of fauveliopsid polychaetes were collected from deep-sea sediments in the northwestern Pacific Ocean off Japan. Two of these species were obtained from bathyal and abyssal depths in the Shikoku Basin and were identified as Fauveliopsis levensteinae and Laubieriopsis hartmanae, which have been previously reported from the abyssal plains of the North Pacific Ocean. The third species collected from bathyal depths off Yakushima is new to science and described as Laubieriopsis verrucosa sp. nov. This new species can be distinguished from its congeners by having numerous body papillae across the whole body, 21 chaetigers, and an unpaired genital papilla on the right side of the posterior margin of chaetiger 8. A key to identify Japanese species of Fauveliopsidae is also included.
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The genus Bathycadulus Scarabino, 1995 was described on the basis of a bathyal species (Bathycadulus fabrizioi Scarabino, 1995) collected from the southern Indian and western Pacific waters. Here we describe three new species, and conduct a morphometric analysis of shells of the four species. Those findings confirming the rather large bathyal and abyssal geographic distribution of the genus.
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