- Titre du projet
- Taxonomical studies of annelids with poor external morphology: an integrative approach
- Descriptif du projet
- Polychaetes are often numerically dominant in the benthic assemblages, both by number of species and their abundance. Their diversity is highly underestimated: many benthic marine areas are still poorly investigated; many widely distributed species are shown to be composed of species complexes after revision. This project is focused on families Orbiniidae and Cossuridae. These families are of special importance among the Annelida because they are common and abundant in shelf habitats, they are essential food resource for fishes, including commercial and they are subjects of ecological monitoring investigations. At the same time their identification is often problematic making such ecological studies meaningless. The polychaete collection of NMHN is one of the biggest in the world, and working with specimens from this collection using integrative taxonomic approach will significantly improve our knowledge on systematics of these difficult groups. Representatives of genera Scoloplos, Orbinia, Phylo, Leodamas (Orbiniidae), and Cossura (Cossuridae) will be studied using morphological and molecular methods. New morphological characters useful for orbiniid and cossurid taxonomy will be checked, their taxonomic value will be assessed. Potential cryptic species will be revealed and described; identification keys for different regions will be prepared. These results will be an important contribution to the knowledge of these groups taxonomy, and to documentation of World Ocean biodiversity, which is essential for nature conservation and sustainable development.
Travaux réalisés par la plateforme AST-RX
