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About the Authors:
Rebecca Fisher
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Australian Institute of Marine Science, UWA Oceans Institute, Crawley, Australia
Nancy Knowlton
Affiliations Department of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., United States of America, Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Russell E. Brainard
Affiliation: Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
M. Julian Caley
Affiliation: Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Australia
Introduction
Existing knowledge shapes our understanding of ecosystems and determines our ability to identify what drives ecosystem function and promotes ecosystem resilience and understand the nature and role of keystone species. Such information is critical to the successful conservation of the world's biodiversity and increasingly underpins management, particularly the broad approach referred to as ecosystem-based management (EBM). However, while a large and growing body of ecological knowledge is stored in the scientific literature, representing a broad range of the world's ecosystems, this existing knowledge may not adequately represent the range of taxa present in these ecosystems. An understanding of this potential bias is becoming increasingly urgent as biodiversity is lost [1], ecosystems are degraded [2] and the vitally important goods and services that they provide are threatened [3], [4].
By concentrating on four major marine ecosystems, we examine the taxonomic distribution of existing ecological knowledge and the extent to which various taxonomic groups may be under- or over-represented in our knowledge of these systems. We analyzed the literature for coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves and kelp beds because these ecosystems provide important ecosystem goods and services both individually and via functional linkages [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. In addition, each ecosystem is relatively discrete and therefore easy to delineate and is defined by its dominant habitat-forming organisms. Also, these ecosystems are at considerable risk from both direct and indirect anthropogenic pressures such as pollution, development, overfishing and now global warming and ocean acidification [11], [12]. Indeed, few if any areas remain where these ecosystems have not been impacted to some extent [11]. Therefore, now more than ever, it is important to assess our...