Glover, and 33 co-authors reported in 2016 that recent years have seen a rapid increase in survey and sampling expeditions to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) abyssal plain, a vast area of the central Pacific that is currently being actively explored for deep-sea minerals (ISA, 2016). Critical to the development of evidence-based environmental policy in the CCZ are data on the biogeography and connectivity of species at a CCZ-regional level.
New information
The London Workshop on the Biogeography and Connectivity of the CCZ was convened to support the integration and synthesis of data from European Union (EU) CCZ projects, supported by the EU Managing Impacts of Deep-Sea Resource Exploitation (MIDAS) and EU Joint Programming Initiative Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans (JPI Oceans) projects.
The London Workshop had three clear goals:
1) To explore, review and synthesise the latest molecular biogeography and connectivity data from across recent CCZ cruises from both contractor and academia-funded projects;
2) To develop complementary and collaborative institutional and program-based academic publication plans to avoid duplication of effort and ensure maximum collaborative impact; and
3) To plan a joint synthetic data publication highlighting key results from a range of planned molecular biogeography/connectivity publications.
32 participants attended the workshop at the Natural History Museum in London from 10-12 May 2016. Presentations and discussions are summarised in this report covering:
1) overviews of current CCZ environmental projects,
2) policy and industry perspectives,
3) synthesis of DNA taxonomy and biogeography studies,
4) summaries of the latest population genetic studies,
5) summaries of the latest broader morphological context, and
6) an overview of publication and proposal plans to maximise collaborative opportunities and finally a series of workshop recommendations.
The London Workshop on the Biogeography and Connectivity of the CCZ concluded with a short discussion on Workshop Recommendations, summarised here:
Funding and Planning
• The most critical funding priority for CCZ research on biogeography and connectivity is high-quality taxonomic work that includes species descriptions based on phylogenetic inference, specimen and data archiving to permit future molecular work and equal weight given to all taxonomic groups and size classes.
• Taxonomic funding proposals should consider international programs that could deliver taxonomic funding across a range of contractor projects, not just within single ones.
• Future international projects on the CCZ must include funding to ensure integrating workshops are fully costed within those projects as they play a vital role in developing collaborations and minimising redundancy of activities.
• Future Workshops on CCZ connectivity should be expanded to include non-EU contractors and additional international programs.
• Areas of Particular Environmental Interest (APEIs), the majority of which are completely unstudied, should be a priority area for research programs on biogeography and connectivity, helping to deliver an improved regional-level understanding of the CCZ.
• Assumptions in the models used for the development of APEIs should be updated as soon as possible with new data with a funded program of research.
• The CCZ academic community should be better informed of policy developments and regulatory milestones.
• Any biological sampling programs that are taking place in the CCZ must include a funded program of research to work up the samples through to publication and data/specimen archiving.
Research
• Connectivity (e.g ecological, population, genetic) should be more precisely defined in CCZ projects and proposals.
• Efforts should be undertaken to examine connectivity in rare species, either through NGS approaches or more broad sampling to determine if rare species are common in under-sampled habitats or refugia.
• ROV or AUV imagery of megafauna should be improved through:
1) collection of voucher materials to confirm conspecificity through DNA sampling,
2) improved resolution, in particular the use of high-quality scientific ROV able to hover and acquire quality imagery, and
3) development of regional atlases of megafauna that are available to all contractors and academic programs.
• Ongoing and future efforts for the development of automated software tools for video analysis are also fundamental and must be encouraged. Given the huge amount of video data gathered by ROV and AUV surveys, automated methods are essential to be able to produce comprehensive community analyses on a timely manner.
• Working species concepts for new CCZ fauna should be based where possible on phylogenetic species concepts using molecular data in combination with morphological characterization.
• New approaches to connectivity study should be developed using new data on larval biology, functional traits (e.g to establish connectivity amongst a range of trait parameters) and physical oceanography (e.g currents and modeled currents).
• New genetic markers and methods to study connectivity should be developed that are appropriate to the fundamental questions posed.
Data and Archiving
• Publications on the DNA taxonomy or phylogeography of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone should ensure that raw data in the form of genetic sequences, images, locality information and voucher material access are archived in global online repositories (GenBank, OBIS, GBIF, WoRMS).
• Morphological data (e.g type material in museum collections, taxonomic descriptions and new morphological information) must be used, where possible, alongside molecular data to:
1) improve knowledge of putative species ranges,
2) improve taxonomic descriptions that rely on DNA data and
3) check the type material of published species and to use a precautionary approach in estimating species ranges.
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