Taiwan France : Marine diversity exploration and evolution of Deep-Sea Fauna – TFDeepEvo

During the few last decades, the exploration of marine environments has brought out the most spectacular taxonomic discoveries but many gaps remain in basic knowledge of marine biodiversity. The aim of the present proposal is to enhance the scientific developments of the exploration of the marine biodiversity in the deep-sea. The present proposal is focussed around the golden triangle of marine biodiversity in the South-Eastern Asia that extends to Taiwan in the North and to New Caledonia in the South. Both the French and the Taiwanese partners of the present proposal are involved in the exploration of the deep-sea diversity in this region. A large international network of taxonomists is involved in the study of the collections gathered for the last 35 years by these teams. However the large amount of new taxonomic knowledge provided through this network had only poorly spread outside the taxonomists’ communities.
The first objective of the proposal is thus to provide a better access to the taxonomic knowledge of the deep-sea organisms. This effort will allow a reduction of the so-called “taxonomic impediment” for the stakeholders concerned by the deep-sea biodiversity. In that purpose we aim at generalizing (i) the use of molecular markers in the description of the diversity of the organisms and (ii) the publication of all data (molecular, taxonomic, ecologic, etc…) gathered on deep-sea organisms in databases accessible using Internet.
The second objective is to show that exploration of the deep-sea realm is biased toward flagship environments and that this bias strongly distorts our understandings of causes of the pattern of diversity in the deep-sea. Our working hypotheses are that the sampling focused on few flagship environments lead to an over interpretation (i) of the spectacular features of deep-sea organisms as reflecting adaptive answers to pressures from these “extreme” environments and (ii) of the distributions of species as reflecting their endemism or their ecological specialisation. To test these hypotheses we have chosen taxa for which much data is available from the exploration of these flagships environments and for which adding data from new expeditions in the golden triangle of marine diversity will add a significant amount of taxonomic and ecological diversity. Adding these additional data will allow us to redefine diversity patterns for these taxa and, leaning upon a phylogenetic approach, to reassess current hypotheses about their biology and evolution.
The success of the proposal will firstly lie on our capacity to build an efficient logistic framework from the field back to the museum collections and the labs. Such logistic framework aims at providing traceability of the data associated to collected specimens but also at identifying as fast as possible the taxonomists that are able to produce species descriptions and taxonomic revisions. Secondly, in both the French and the Taiwan teams, we will bring together leading researchers in taxonomy with highly specialized researchers in molecular systematics (covering various fields from population genetics to phylogenomics). This association will insure the success of the second objective of the projects. Both the French and the Taiwanese teams have a long experience of collaborations. The present proposal will allow us to reinforce our relationships.