Southern Ocean Asteroidea: aproposed update for the Register of Antarctic Marine Species.

Camille Moreau,Antonio Aguera,Bruno Danis,Quentin Jossart

doi:10.3897/bdj.3.e7062

Abstract

BackgroundThe Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS, De Broyer et al. 2015) is the regional component of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board 2015) in the Southern Ocean. It has been operating for the last ten years, with a special effort devoted towards its completion after the International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007-2008, in the framework of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML, 2005 - 2010). Its objective is to offer free and open access to a complete register of all known species living in the Southern Ocean, building a workbench of the present taxonomic knowledge for that region. The Antarctic zone defined by this dynamic and community-based tool has been investigated with a particular interest. The Sub-Antarctic zone was a secondary objective during the establishment of the RAMS and is still lacking the impulse of the scientific community for some taxa.New informationIn the present study, more than 13,000 occurrences records of Asteroidea (Echinodermata) have been compiled within the RAMS area of interest and checked against the RAMS species list of sea stars, using WoRMS Taxon Match tool. Few mismatches (basionym mistakes : i.e. original name misspelled or incorrect) were found within the existing list and 97 unregistered species are actually occurring within the RAMS boundaries. After this update, the number of Asteroidea species was increased by around 50%, now reaching 295 accepted species.

Highlights

The Register of Antarctic Marine Species, RAMSRAMS is a collaborative and dynamic information system managing Southern Ocean marine taxon names and related information (De Broyer et al 2015)
In order to complete the taxonomic information for the class Asteroidea, we propose in this work an updated version of the checklist of Southern Ocean sea stars species occurring within the RAMS area of interest
The data underpinning the analyses reported in this paper are deposited at GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, http://ipt.pensoft.net/resource?r=southern_ocean_asteroidea&v=1.1

Summary

Background

The Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS, De Broyer et al 2015) is the regional component of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board 2015) in the Southern Ocean. Few mismatches (basionym mistakes : i.e. original name misspelled or incorrect) were found within the existing list and 97 unregistered species are occurring within the RAMS boundaries. After this update, the number of Asteroidea species was increased by around 50%, reaching 295 accepted species. Asteroidea, Sea stars, Southern Ocean, RAMS, WoRMS, Register of Antarctic Marine Species, Biodiversity, Checklist

Introduction

Materials and methods

Findings

Discussion