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Project Description
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Overview
Coral reefs harbor the greatest marine biodiversity and are the most vulnerable marine ecosystems to anthropogenic influences. Even the order of magnitude of reef biodiversity is poorly known, yet eutrophication, overfishing, and global warming threaten the very existence of reef ecosystems. Documenting reef biodiversity is thus of the utmost urgency, ... |
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Our organisms
Holothuroids, or sea cucumbers, are elongate, soft-bodied “echinoderm worms” ranging from a few millimeters to >3 m and >5 kg in size. The ~1600 described extant species occur from the intertidal to the deepest oceanic trenches. Their ubiquity in the largest ecosystem, the abyssal plain, ostensibly renders them, albeit far from sight, one of the dominant ... |
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The Aspidochirote Working Group
We, as active workers in aspidochirotid taxonomy and biology, have agreed to coordinate and facilitate systematic research on our organisms. Previously, some members had met in 2002 to begin standardizing morphological characters for a character matrix. We have since formed an expanded and enthusiastic group to ... |
