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About the Authors:
Laetitia Plaisance
* E-mail: [email protected]
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
M. Julian Caley
Affiliation: Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Australia
Russell E. Brainard
Affiliation: Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration–Fisheries, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
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
Introduction
Reef species diversity has been estimated at ∼600,000 to more than 9 million species worldwide [1]–[3] This diversity is concentrated in the central Indo-Pacific [4] (the “Coral Triangle”), and decreases with increasing distance from the Indo-Australian archipelago. Traditionally, large and well-studied macrofauna, such as corals and fishes, have been used as surrogates in biodiversity assessments [5] because they are comparatively easy to census and taxonomically well known. However, these two groups represent just a tiny fraction of reef-associated diversity, and the use of a few groups as surrogates for biodiversity assessment may not capture patterns of diversity across all organisms [6], [7].
Reefs are also one of the most endangered habitats of the planet [8]. The loss of corals and the associated potential threat to biodiversity [9], [10] are well established, but we still remain largely ignorant of the details, and conservation priorities are often based on what we can measure. Providing a reliable method that estimates biodiversity across space and through time is essential for designing the specifics of marine protected areas and for monitoring their effectiveness. Inventory data on small organisms collected to assess coral reef diversity largely consist of taxonomic identifications of collected material through non-standardized sampling strategies. The limitations of these methods are obvious: the results are not comparable from site to site because the sampling effort is not quantifiable, the number of specimens processed is limited by a very time-consuming approach that depends on the availability of taxonomic expertise, and cryptic species are not...