Guadalupe Bribiesca-Contreras

National Oceanography Centre, Southampton | NOCS · Ocean Biogeosciences

Valettietta Lincoln & Thurston, 1983 (Amphipoda: Alicelloidea) is an infrequently sampled genus of scavenging amphipod, with a known bathymetric range from 17–5467 m encompassing a variety of habitats from anchialine caves to abyssal plains. Molecular systematics studies have uncovered cryptic speciation in specimens collected from the abyssal Paci...

More than 7000 demosponge species have been described to date globally but <2% are known from the abyssal plains, which occupy some 50% of the Earth's surface. The demosponge fauna in the abyssal nodule fields at Clarion‐Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific Ocean, a region being explored for potential deep‐sea mining, is a case in point. A total of...

We present a checklist of annelids from recent United Kingdom Seabed Resources (UKSR) expeditions (Abyssal Baseline - ABYSSLINE project) to the eastern abyssal Pacific Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) polymetallic nodule fields, based on DNA species delimitation, including imagery of voucher specimens, Darwin Core (DwC) data and links to vouchered spe...

The DNA taxonomy of six species of the annelid family Lumbrineridae collected from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Central Pacific, an area of potential mining interest for polymetallic nodules, is presented. Lumbrinerids are an ecologically important and understudied annelid family within the deep sea, with many species still undescribed....

Abyssal seafloor communities cover more than 60% of Earth’s surface. Despite their great size, abyssal plains extend across modest environmental gradients compared to other marine ecosystems. However, little is known about the patterns and processes regulating biodiversity or potentially delimiting biogeographical boundaries at regional scales in t...

The global surge in demand for metals such as cobalt and nickel has created unprecedented interest in deep-sea habitats with mineral resources. The largest area of activity is a 6 million km2 region known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the central and eastern Pacific, regulated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Baseline biodiver...

Aim The abyssal Clarion‐Clipperton Zone (CCZ), Pacific Ocean, is an area of commercial importance owing to the growing interest in mining high‐grade polymetallic nodules at the seafloor for battery metals. Research into the spatial patterns of faunal diversity, composition, and population connectivity is needed to better understand the ecological i...

Introduction The Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Northeast Pacific Ocean holds the largest deposits of polymetallic nodules at abyssal depths. These nodules are rock formations containing valuable metals and minerals targeted for mining. They further provide diverse habitat for a range of deep-sea species. Little is known so far on the taxonom...

This is a contribution in a series of taxonomic publications on benthic fauna of polymetallic nodule fields in the eastern abyssal Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The material was collected during environmental surveys targeting exploration contract areas ‘UK-1’, ‘OMS’ and ‘NORI-D’, as well as an Area of Particular Environmental Interest, ‘APEI-6’....

There is a growing interest in the exploitation of deep-sea mineral deposits, particularly on the abyssal seafloor of the central Pacific Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which is rich in polymetallic nodules. In order to effectively manage potential exploitation activities, a thorough understanding of the biodiversity, community structure, species r...

The deep sea is the last ecosystem for which patterns of biodiversity are poorly defined. The occurrence, strength, shape and drivers of distributional trends in species richness throughout the deep sea are broadly inconclusive and are poorly explored at a global scale1,2, but this environment faces accelerating pressures with a changing climate an...

Recently, there has been a resurgent interest in the exploration of deep-sea mineral deposits, particularly polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), central Pacific. Accurate environmental impact assessment is critical to the effective management of a new industry and depends on a sound understanding of species taxonomy, biogeogra...

The Caymanostellidae is a family of rarely encountered wood-dwelling deep-sea sea-stars, with only six species, in two genera, described to date. During the COBERPES 5 expedition on board the RV 'Justo Sierra', off Tabasco, Gulf of Mexico in 2013, 12 specimens were recovered from a single piece of sunken wood. Herein we describe a new genus and spe...

Macrofauna are an abundant and diverse component of abyssal benthic communities and are likely to be heavily impacted by polymetallic nodule mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). In 2012, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) used available benthic biodiversity data and environmental proxies to establish nine no-mining areas, called Areas...

Aim Biogeographic barriers emerged in the tropical oceans as continental masses moved with plate tectonics, and as the tropics contracted to lower latitudes from the late Eocene. These barriers have shaped tropical marine biodiversity. We characterize large‐scale diversity patterns for tropical brittle stars and investigate the effect of biogeograp...

The Derwent River seastar, ‘Marginaster’ littoralis (Echinodermata: Asteroidea), has been assessed as critically endangered owing to its highly restricted range within one estuary in Tasmania, Australia. However, there have been concerns about the validity and status of the species. Here, we use non-invasive X-ray computed tomography to review the...

Caves are a useful system for testing evolutionary and biogeographic hypotheses, as they are isolated, and their environmental conditions have resulted in adaptive selection across different taxa. Although in recent years many more cave species have been discovered, cave-dwelling members of the class Ophiuroidea (brittle stars) remain scarce. Out o...

Our knowledge of the distribution and evolution of deep-sea life is limited, impeding our ability to identify priority areas for conservation¹. Here we analyse large integrated phylogenomic and distributional datasets of seafloor fauna from the sea surface to the abyss and from equator to pole of the Southern Hemisphere for an entire class of inver...

Brittle-stars in the family Ophiocomidae are large and colourful inhabitants of tropical shallow water habitats across the globe. Here we use targeted capture and next-generation sequencing to generate robust phylogenomic trees for 39 of the 43 species in order to test the monophyly of existing genera. The large genus Ophiocoma, as currently consti...

O'Loughlin, P.M. and Bribiesca-Contreras, G. 2017. New asterinid seastars from the Pacific Ocean (Echinodermata: Asteroidea). Memoirs of Museum Victoria 76: 121-132. Three new Aquilonastra O'Loughlin (in O'Loughlin and Waters, 2004) species are described: Aquilonastra donia sp. nov. for New Caledonia, lodged in the Muséum national d'Histoire nature...

The aim of the present work is to report and describe three new species of the tropical brittle-star genus Ophiolepis . The new species are described herein as Ophiolepis aemulata sp. nov., Ophiolepis buitronae sp. nov. and Ophiolepis crebra sp. nov. As these species were previously misidentified, morphological traits and similarities between them...

Our knowledge of macro-evolutionary processes in the deep sea is poor, leading to much speculation about whether the deep sea is a source or sink of evolutionary adaptation. Here, we use a phylogenetic approach, on large molecular (688 species, 275 kbp) and distributional datasets (104 513 records) across an entire class of marine invertebrates (Op...

One specimen of Ophiura ljungmani Lyman, 1878 was collected in an anchialine cave in Cozumel Island, Quintana Roo. The finding represents the first record of this ophiuroid in an anchialine cave, and also the shallower record for the species in any habitat.

A method for representing 2D (two-dimensional) tree objects is described. This representation is based on a chain code, which is called the Slope Chain Code (SCC). Thus, 2D tree objects are described by means of a chain of element strings suitably combined by means of parentheses. These 2D tree objects correspond to naturally existing 2D tree struc...

The echinoderm species richness of the Aerolito de Paraiso anchialine cave, on Cozumel Island, in the Mexican Caribbean, is assessed on the basis of morphological and DNA barcoding data. We included specimens from this cave system and from different open sea areas, and employed two different approaches for species delineation based on DNA barcoding...

The anchialine cave Aerolito de Paraiso is located in Cozumel Island, Mexico. It is unique because it is mainly inhabited by four classes of echinoderms. After reviewing all of the material collected for this location, we present a taxonomic list composed of 22 species of echinoderms. Ophiuroidea is the best represented class in the anchialine cave...