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Global Biodiversity in Cold-Water Coral Reef Ecosystems

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Book cover Marine Animal Forests

Abstract

Over half of all scleractinian coral species inhabit ocean depths greater than 50 m, some of which are capable of constructing reefs tens of kilometers long and hundreds of meters high. The biodiversity of life found on these cold-water coral reefs is astounding yet remarkable since, in contrast to the photic and mesophotic zones, so few coral species actually create a framework matrix at these depths. In light of rapid climate change and unprecedented rates of anthropogenic disturbance, it is urgent we understand how biodiversity in the depths of our oceans is coupled to the persistence of these habitats. We provide a synthetic overview of animal biodiversity associated with major reef framework-forming species, discussing this with respect to global trends in species diversity, composition, and regional species pools, large knowledge gaps, and also the frontiers in technology that cold-water coral science is adopting to help address these gaps.

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Acknowledgments

This work builds upon several projects including the European Union Marie Curie fellowships ECCRE (Contract no. 002469) and TRACES (MOIF-CT-2006–040018). The authors acknowledge the recent UK Ocean Acidification programme (Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/H017305/1) and on-going NERC projects (grants NE/M007235/1 and NE/J021121/1). Further thanks are due to the captain and crew of the RRS James Cook for assistance at sea and to Marta Mellado-Silva, Claudia Wienberg, and Dierk Hebbeln at MARUM, and Di Tracey and Malcolm Clark at NIWA for images.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK

    Lea-Anne Henry & J. Murray Roberts

  2. Center for Marine Science, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 S. College Road, Wilmington, NC, 28403-5928, USA

    J. Murray Roberts

Authors
  1. Lea-Anne Henry
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  2. J. Murray Roberts
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Correspondence to Lea-Anne Henry .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Environmental Science & Technology Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    Sergio Rossi

  2. LECOB / Ocean Observatory CNRS / Pierre and Marie Curie University, Banyuls-sur-mer, France

    Lorenzo Bramanti

  3. Dept. Marine Biology & Oceanography, Institute of Marine Sciences, Barcelona, Spain

    Andrea Gori

  4. Balearic Oceanographic Centre Spanish Institute of Oceanography, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    Covadonga Orejas Saco del Valle

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Henry, LA., Roberts, J.M. (2016). Global Biodiversity in Cold-Water Coral Reef Ecosystems. In: Rossi, S., Bramanti, L., Gori, A., Orejas Saco del Valle, C. (eds) Marine Animal Forests. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_6-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_6-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17001-5

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