Íris Sampaio: Deep dive into the NE Atlantic octocorallia world
V petek 15. 2. 2019, ob 9.15 bo imela na Morski biološki postaji v Piranu predavanje z naslovom Deep dive into the ne atlantic octocorallia world – Íris Sampaio (University of Azores, Portugalska).
Corals from the Indo-Pacific tropical realm are the ones that everybody knows. Though other regions and climates also harbor corals, mainly in the deep sea. Coral reefs are mostly composed by the hard scleractinian corals, yet coral gardens are mostly composed by their fellow counterparts, the octocorals. Octocorals diversity is colorful and with charismatic morphologies resembling mushrooms, trees or even feathers in distinct taxonomic ranks. Due to their skeleton complexity they are utterly sophisticated animals. However, their taxonomy is in the hand of less than ten taxonomists worldwide. Since 2007, when I started collecting corals to understand their vulnerability to the impact of longline fishing, I got curious about what were those species. During my PhD, I have visited reference European museum collections to study the Plexauridae family in the NE Atlantic Ocean. Based on a zoological nomenclature revision I have discovered the highest octocoral diversity of any European country located at the Azores archipelago. Moreover, I found a predominance of plexaurid octocorals at the Mauritanian deep sea. Also in Mauritania, a new habitat and species of the genus Swiftia is currently being described. But, because I defend an integrative taxonomic approach, I am at the Marine Biological station of Piran to go deeper into the taxonomy of the genus Swiftia with the Assemble Plus grant DeepSwiT supervised by Dr. David Stanković. Octocorals three-dimensionality and habitat building capacity is crucial for several species like fish, echinoderms, molluscs, hydrozoans, ascidians and sponges. If we aim to understand, protect and explore a remote vast area like the deep sea, we need to invest in octocoral taxonomy. There is no blue economy without blue taxonomy.
Predavanje bo v angleščini.
Foto: researchgate
