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Ocean Species Discoveries reports 11 new species from 7000 meters of ocean depth

NEWS - To date, only a small fraction of the estimated two million living marine species have been named and described. A major challenge is the time required to describe and publish new species, which is a crucial step in studying and protecting them.

Ocean Species Discoveries reports 11 new species from 7000 meters of ocean depth


Meanwhile, accelerating global change continues to threaten the Earth’s biodiversity, including the largely unexplored ocean ecosystems. Rising temperatures, pollution, fishing and mining activities are becoming more and more prevalent.

The Ocean Species Discoveries (OSD) initiative has been launched, offering a new platform for rapid and comprehensive taxonomic description of marine invertebrate species. OSD is coordinated by the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA), a project of the Senckenberg Research Institute and the Natural History Museum Frankfurt.

SOSA’s goal is to facilitate the discovery, protection and awareness of marine invertebrate species before they become extinct. The project coordinates 25 different researchers and produces data on thirteen marine invertebrate taxa, including one new genus, eleven new species, and one redescription and recovery.

The species, originating from all over the world and at depths ranging from 5.2 to 7081 meters, are brought together in an open access publication in the Biodiversity Data Journal.

“Only by harnessing the collective power of global progress, expertise and technological advances will we be able to describe the estimated 1.8 million unknown species that inhabit our oceans. Every taxonomist specializing in some group of marine invertebrates is invited to contribute,” says Prof. Dr. Julia Sigwart.

SOSA in collaboration with the Biodiversity Data Journal presents a revolutionary approach to the description of new species. The publication of new species takes years and sometimes even decades to complete. The ARPHA publishing platform further accelerates species description and its use in conservation studies and programs by using an efficient data publishing workflow.

ARPHA automatically exports all species data complete with images and descriptions to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Biodiversity Literature Repository on Zenodo, where other researchers can easily find and use it.

OSD reports on Cunicolomaera grata, an amphipod that lives along the seabed. Another species is Lepetodrilus marianae which lives in hydrothermal vents, an underwater volcano with temperatures of up to 400C. The study covers plots in the North and Central Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the North, East and West Pacific Ocean.

“Currently, there is a significant delay in naming and describing new animals, often because journals expect additional ecological or phylogenetic insights. This means that many marine species go undescribed due to lack of data. OSD addresses this by offering concise and complete taxonomic descriptions without requiring a specific theme, which refocuses attention on the importance of taxonomy,” says Dr. Torben Riehl.

Original source:

(SOSA) SOSA, Brandt A, Chen C, Engel L, Esquete P, Horton T, Jażdżewska AM, Johannsen N, Kaiser S, Kihara TC, Knauber H, Kniesz K, Landschoff J, Lörz A-N, Machado FM, Martínez-Muñoz CA, Riehl T, Serpell-Stevens A, Sigwart JD, Tandberg AHS, Tato R, Tsuda M, Vončina K, Watanabe HK, Wenz C, Williams JD (2024) Ocean Species Discoveries 1–12 — A primer for accelerating marine invertebrate taxonomy. Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e128431. DOI:10.3897/BDJ.12.e128431

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