Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a growing threat to biodiversity and ecosystems globally. However, a limited number of studies have focused on the effect of ALAN in the tropical or subtropical regions, and the impact of ALAN on species interactions and ecological processes is particularly understudied. We introduced ALAN into light-naïve forest plots to examine whether ALAN affects herbivory rate and alters the growth and...

Species distribution modelling has proven effective in locating cold-water coral hotspots in the deep sea. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and gradient boosting (GBM) are equally good at modelling rare species, but previous efforts to predict the distribution of deep-sea Antipatharia have mostly employed MaxEnt. This study investigates how algorithm choice (MaxEnt or GBM) and the application of backward stepwise variable pre-selectio...

The most well-known species-based conservation tool is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. The current coverage of species in the Red List is known to under-represent benthic marine species. Cold-water corals (CWCs) are increasingly recognised as key to deep-water biodiversity and integral to protected vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs), but no deep-sea coral species w...

Historically, evolutionary studies have not been able to resolve relationships within Octocorallia but recent advances in genomic techniques have allowed large numbers of Ultra Conserved Elements and exons, collectively referred to as conserved elements, to be extracted from the nuclear genome. Few studies have compared evolutionary histories generated with these conserved elements and with those inferred from complete mitogen...

Understanding how ecological, environmental and geographic features influence population genetic patterns provides crucial insights into a species' evolutionary history, as well as their vulnerability or resilience under climate change. In the Southern Ocean, population genetic variation is influenced across multiple spatial scales ranging from circum‐Antarctic, which encompasses the entire continent, to regional, with varying...

No other group of animals typifies the uniqueness of Antarctic life more than Pycnogonida (sea spiders), with 20% of all known species found in the Southern Ocean, and 64% of these endemic to the Antarctic. Despite nearly 200 years of research into pycnogonids and other benthic phyla in Antarctica, the parameters which drive the distribution and diversity of benthic fauna are still poorly understood. This study aimed to invest...

Based on a comprehensive analysis of molecular sequence data, the Sepiidae genera Acanthosepion Rochebrune, 1884; Ascarosepion Rochebrune, 1884; Aurosepina Jothinayagam, 1987; Decorisepia Iredale, 1926; Doratosepion Rochebrune, 1884; Rhombosepion Rochebrune, 1884 and Spathidosepion Rochebrune, 1884 are here re-instated and formally recognised as valid. Sepia Linnaeus, 1758 and Sepiella Gray, 1849 are retained, but Metasepia Ho...

Despite being landed in commercial cephalopod fisheries, species of Alloteuthis are not yet well defined, with A. subulata and A. media often confused. DNA barcoding combined with morphometric analyses has begun to clarify the distinction between these two morphologically similar species but has been limited in its geographic coverage to date. Herein, we provide DNA barcodes for 228 specimens collected from Guinea Bissau in th...

The extent to which any particular taxon supplies novel natural products depends on biological and evolutionary differences, and on decisions made by (or constraints on) biodiscovery scientists. The influences of different sources of variability on the biodiscovery process were examined in a study of the Cnidaria, a group recognised as an important source of novel marine natural products. The number of species with at least on...

Cephalopod beaks are essential for prey acquisition and fragmentation during feeding. Thus, it is expected that ecological pressures affect cephalopod beak shape. From a practical perspective, these structures are also used to identify gut contents of marine megafauna, such as toothed whales, sharks, seabirds, and large pelagic fishes. Here, we investigated the relative importance of ecological pressures and phylogenetic relat...

The processes that control diversification and speciation in deep-sea species are poorly known. Here, we analyzed data produced by Restriction-Site Associated DNA Sequencing (RAD-Seq) of octocorals in the genus Paramuricea to elucidate diversification patterns and examine the role of environmental gradients in their evolution. The genus Paramuricea evolved around 8 MYA, with a high probability of a broad ancestral depth range...

Marine sponges and their associated microbiota are multicellular animals known to produce metabolites with interesting pharmacological properties playing a pivotal role against a plethora of pathologic disorders such as inflammation, cancer and infections. Characellide A and B belong to a novel class of glycolipopeptides isolated from the deep sea marine sponge Characella pachastrelloides . In this study, we have evaluated the...

Marine hard-bottom communities are undergoing severe change under the influence of multiple drivers, notably climate change, extraction of natural resources, pollution and eutrophication, habitat degradation, and invasive species. Monitoring marine biodiversity in such habitats is, however, challenging as it typically involves expensive, non-standardized, and often destructive sampling methods that limit its scalability. Diffe...

The ocean plays a crucial role in the functioning of the Earth System and in the provision of vital goods and services. The United Nations (UN) declared 2021–2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Roadmap for the Ocean Decade aims to achieve six critical societal outcomes (SOs) by 2030, through the pursuit of four objectives (Os). It specifically recognizes the scarcity of biological data for d...

Aim We tested whether the size of habitat patches along the coastline of Great Britain influences molluscan species richness. Location Coastline of Great Britain. Methods Intertidal mollusc data were compiled from the National Biodiversity Network to derive a matrix of species presence/absence in 10 km × 10 km squares (hectads). Major groupings within the coastal fauna were identified using clustering based on Simpson's dissim...