PROJECT PARTNER

Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore

PROJECT TITLE

Marine Biodiversity Survey of Southeast Asia – Indonesia

The diversity of life is one of the most fundamental issues in science, yet we are nowhere near a precise estimate for the number of species in any major habitat on Earth. Tabulating known species has become more manageable in the Information Age, but estimating total species diversity remains challenging because the rate of species discovery has not declined. Some taxa such as marine mammals, mangroves and seagrasses are extremely well characterised, but the majority of marine groups may have more species unknown than known, with between one-third and 90% of all existing species remaining to be discovered (Mora et al. 2011, PLOS Biology; Appeltans et al. 2012, Current Biology). More taxonomists and technological advances are accelerating the discovery process, but by and large, predictions based on current sampling rates have not converged. Species are also being lost faster than they are being discovered (Lees & Pimm 2015, Current Biology).

Clearly, given the vast challenge before us, we will need to employ and integrate these modern and traditional approaches by modelling the predictions and their uncertainties based on empirical samples of diverse marine habitats in Southeast Asia. A recent study deployed a limited number of standardised collecting devices (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures, or ARMS) designed to recruit organisms that tend to hide within the complex structural framework of coral reefs (otherwise known as the cryptobiome), demonstrating that less than one-third of species across all major groups of marine organisms could be identified to species (Ip et al. 2022, Molecular Ecology). For severely understudied groups such as worms (Annelida), as few as 2.5% of all detected species could be recognised with an existing species name.

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KEY OBJECTIVE

This study aims to assess the extent of marine biodiversity using standardized collecting devices to gather local reef organisms for identification and quantification through high-throughput DNA sequencing. The research is conducted at Karimunjawa National Park, Central Java, Indonesia, one of the National Parks with high diversity in marine life. ARMS is used to estimate marine biodiversity over one- and two-year deployments at up to three sites (multiple replicate ARMS units per site).

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