High-resolution species biogeography of Larger Benthic Foraminifera from Raja Ampat (Indonesia) and the Indo-Pacific Ocean
Final Report Abstract
This study on larger benthic foraminiferal species richness supports previous observations on species richness patterns of various marine taxa assigning the Malay archipelago as the hotspot of tropical marine biodiversity. Compared to previous studies involving other tropical shallow water taxa the apex of LBF richness in the northern part of the Coral Triangle, i.e. the Philippine archipelago, is most congruent to richness of crustaceans, molluscs and reef fish. The results of both of the methods used herein were highly correlated, however, they differ in precision. Whereas the MCP overlay richness map provides a general impression on richness gradients over the Indo-Pacific realm the SDM established richness map reveals patterns on a finer scale and identifies probable richness peaks within the larger central Indo-Pacific hotspot region and beyond. Both methods highlight particularly the central Philippine Islands as the core region, a very high richness for eastern Indonesia and the northern Great Barrier Reef, and both, for instance, agree on a richness of about 20 species for the isolated Hawaiian Islands. However, the SDM in contrary to the MCP for example reveals a higher richness for southern Papua than for the Lesser Sunda Islands in southern Indonesia and also allows a more differentiated view on the richness patterns in the western Indian Ocean, where particularly the coasts of the Mozambique Channel display a comparable and even slightly higher richness than the Maldives. The northern Mozambique Channel has been shown to be a particularly unique and species rich environment and the SDM prediction presented herein encourages further sampling efforts on reef sediments to clear the discrepancy between the two diverging results. The cluster analysis revealed large scale faunal similarities and faunal breaks of foraminifera that are largely consistent with previous findings. The species-level further allowed a higher resolution and revealed smaller provinces within larger areas. It appears that the central Indo-Pacific fauna has a slightly higher affinity to that of the Indian Ocean than to that of the Pacific. So far our results on richness, endemism and affinities would most likely support the hypothesis of the CIP acting as a species factory, i.e. ‘center of origin’, however, without precluding other mechanisms and hypotheses that may also be involved.
Publications
- (2015). Raja Ampat: A Hotspot of Foraminiferal Diversity. GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition, November 1-4, 2015, Baltimore (USA). Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 47, No. 7, 339 p. Paper No. 126-12
Förderer M, Langer MR
- (2016): Five new species and one new genus of recent miliolid foraminifera from Raja Ampat (West Papua, Indonesia). PeerJ 4:e2157
Förderer M, Langer MR
(See online at https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2157) - 2017: Biogeography and Diversity Hotspots of Larger Indo-Pacific Foraminifera: A Structural Faunal Analysis from Raja Ampat, 363 pages
Förderer M
