BioProject

The distribution of marine sponges in the tropical Southwest Pacific Ocean is largely unexplored despite the vital ecological role of sponges in coral reefs and their valuable metabolites for drug design. More...

The distribution of marine sponges in the tropical Southwest Pacific Ocean is largely unexplored despite the vital ecological role of sponges in coral reefs and their valuable metabolites for drug design. Several collection campaigns to the French Polynesian archipelagos (Society, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Gambier, and Austral) were conducted to assess the bio- and chemodiversity of the island groups. These campaigns resulted in the acquisition of over 200 sponge specimens, for which we generated molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs). Based on these MOTUs, we assessed, in the so-far largest analysis of its kind for this area, the sponge composition and faunistic overlaps of the marine province Southeast Polynesia with Marquesas and Central Polynesia. We also compared the sponge fauna of these Eastern Indo-Pacific provinces with marine provinces of the adjacent Central Indo-Pacific realm. Our findings corroborate that sponge faunal similarity within marine realms is higher than among realms, and follows marine barriers to gene flow as established for other taxa. We detected high levels of provincial endemism for marine sponges, consistent with findings from other Indo-Pacific regions. At the level of province, geographical distance and ocean surface currents influence faunal similarity, and constitute the primary factors for the connectivity of sponge faunas between the disjunct and remote island groups in the tropical Southwest Pacific Ocean. Less...