260 Voyages Beneath the Sea: A global assessment of biodiversity and research effort at deep-sea hydrothermal vents
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Biogeography, Conservation Biology, Marine Biology
- Keywords
- seafloor massive sulphide, sampling effort, benthos, deep-sea mining, chemosynthetic ecosystems
- Copyright
- © 2019 Thaler et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. 260 Voyages Beneath the Sea: A global assessment of biodiversity and research effort at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27559v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27559v1
Abstract
For over forty years, hydrothermal vents and the communities that thrive on them have been a source of profound discovery for deep-sea ecologists. These ecosystems are found throughout the world on active plate margins as well as other geologically active features. In addition to their ecologic interest, hydrothermal vent fields are comprised of metallic ores, sparking a nascent industry that aims to mine these metal-rich deposits for their mineral wealth. Here we provide the first systematic assessment of biodiversity at hydrothermal vents normalized against research effort. Cruise reports from scientific expeditions as well as other primary literature were used to characterize the extent of exploration, determine the relative biodiversity of different biogeographic provinces, identify knowledge gaps related to the distribution of research effort, and prioritize targets for additional sampling to establish biodiversity baselines ahead of potential commercial exploitation. The Northwest Pacific, Southwest Pacific, and Southern Ocean biogeographic provinces were identified as high biodiversity using rarefaction of incidence data, whereas the North East Pacific Rise, Northern East Pacific, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Indian Ocean provinces had medium biodiversity, and the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center was identified as a province of relatively low biodiversity. A North/South divide in the extent of biological research and the targets of hydrothermal vent mining prospects was also identified. Finally, we provide an estimate of sampling completeness for each province to inform scientific and stewardship priorities.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.