- Project title
- Unravelling the diversity of Tropical Epimeria
- Description of the project
- The TROPEPI project aims to describe the diversity of Tropical Epimeriids (Amphipoda: Epimeriidae). Amphipods are a hyper-diverse group of crustaceans, among which the genus Epimeria is recognized as flagship taxon in Antarctica. Preliminary phylogenetic results revealed a huge gap of knowledge regarding the biodiversity of this taxon in the Central Indo-Pacific region, despite it being an exceptional reservoir of species. The TROPEPI project aims to valorize the very large collection of tropical amphipods sampled during the various MNHN expeditions of the Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos program, through a complete taxonomic revision of tropical Epimeria from the CIP region, including detailed morphological descriptions of many species new to science. Species delimitations will be based on the integration of phylogeographic data with geometric morphometric analyses of 3D μCT-scans.
Works done by the platform AST-RX
