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Abstract
Amphipod crustaceans are an essential component of tropical marine biodiversity. However, their distribution and biogeography have not been analysed in one of the world’s largest tropical countries nested in the Coral Triangle, Indonesia. We collected and identified amphipod crustaceans from eight sites in Indonesian waters and combined the results with data from 32 additional sites in the literature. We analysed the geographic distribution of 147 benthic amphipod crustaceans using cluster analysis and the ‘Bioregions Infomaps’ neural network method of biogeographic discrimination. We found five groups of benthic amphipod crustaceans which show relationships with sampling methods, depth, and substrata. Neural network biogeographic analysis indicated there was only one biogeographic region that matched with the global amphipod regions and marine biogeographic realms defined for all marine taxa. There was no support for Wallaces or other lines being marine biogeographic boundaries in the region. Species richness was lower than expected considering the region is within the Coral Triangle. We hypothesise that this low richness might be due to the intense fish predation which may have limited amphipod diversification. The results indicated that habitat rather than biogeography determines amphipod distribution in Indonesia. Therefore, future research needs to sample more habitats, and consider habitat in conservation planning.
Highlights
Species distribution data are the foundation for understanding global patterns of biodiversity, prioritizing areas for conservation, and projecting the impacts of habitat loss and climate change (e.g., Zhao et al, 2020)
Thirty-six amphipod species from 26 families and 31 genera were recorded from 8 sites during field collection, including the first records of seven families for Indonesia (Table S2)
For the benthic amphipods analysed, we found one biogeographic region for Indonesia that matched with the global amphipod biogeographic regions proposed by Arfianti & Costello (2020b), studies on reef fish (Mora et al, 2003), corals (Veron et al, 2009), proposed marine ecoregions (Spalding et al, 2007), and previously proposed biogeographic realms based on 65,000 species across all marine taxa (Costello et al, 2017)
Summary
Species distribution data are the foundation for understanding global patterns of biodiversity, prioritizing areas for conservation, and projecting the impacts of habitat loss and climate change (e.g., Zhao et al, 2020). Amphipods are one of the most abundant and diverse macro-invertebrates in the oceans, playing a major role in food webs as herbivores, predators, detritivores, and scavengers, and as food for other species such as macroinvertebrates and fish (Arfianti & Costello, 2020a). Lobsters, corals, and other marine biota are reported to have the highest biodiversity in Indonesia
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