Meeting Abstract

116.5  Tuesday, Jan. 7 11:15  Biodiversity of Tanaidacea (Crustacea: Peracarida) in the Northern Gulf of Mexico RHODES, A.C.; LAVELLE, K.A.*; BOURQUE, J.R.; DEMOPOULOS, A.W.; MONTAGNA, P.A.; AMADOR, M.D.; Texas A & M University Corpus Christi; Texas A & M University Corpus Christi; US Geological Survey; US Geological Survey; Texas A & M University Corpus Christi; Texas A & M University Corpus Christi Adelaide.Rhodes@tamucc.edu

For this study, historic data from research cruises composed of more than 8,000 biogeographic observations were compared to data gathered during research cruises led by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Harte Research Institute (TAMUCC-HRI) and the US Geological Survey. The depths targeted by these monitoring cruises (below 1000 m) have been historically undersampled for tanaidacean diversity. New observations from these expeditions have increased total bathyal tanaidacean observations in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) by 12% (more than 1,000 observations) over previous sampling efforts. Of the approximately 1200 global species of tanaidaceans, 109 were found in the bathyal GOM. More than 10 genera and at least 1 family of tanaidaceans were new records for this region. Minimum and maximum depth ranges of several known families have been expanded. Diversity estimates based on these new observations indicate that tanaidacean diversity is significantly higher than previously reported (e.g. a 72% increase in species richness between 1000 m and 1500 m and a 216% increase in species richness between 1500 m and 2000). These new observations demonstrate that diversity estimates of tanaidaceans in the bathyal region of the GOM have been historically underestimated and are sensitive to sampling effort. Our results suggest that diversity estimates will increase as our expertise and sampling effort increases not only for tanaidaceans, but in other deep-sea taxa as well.