Coral Reefs (CReefs)
Estimates suggest that there could be anywhere from 1-10 million species on coral reefs, most of which are unknown, but these estimates are based on extrapolations from the numbers of insects in a rainforest or from partial counts of species in aquariums. We do know, however, that though they represent less than 0.2% of the area covered by oceans, coral reefs are the most diverse of marine environments. Although coral reefs have been studied for centuries, statistical models cannot yet even predict how many samples would be necessary to collect all the species, let alone document their distributions. The goals of CReefs are to expand tropical taxonomic knowledge and increase the exchange of coral reef ecosystem data dispersed throughout the globe. Taxonomic efforts will focus on such understudied groups as sponges, octocorals, mollusks, polychaetes, crustaceans, echinoderms, tunicates, seagrasses, and red, brown, and green algae, as well as technological advancement and sampling strategies relative to these foci. Microbial diversity will be assayed in collaboration with the CoML Microbes efforts and substantial contributions will be made to the Barcode of Life.
For more information, visit the CReefs website: http://www.creefs.org
Coral Reef Project Team
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Project Coordinators:
Megan Moews, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, USA
Mary Wakeford, Australian Institute for Marine Science, Australia
Laetitia Plaisance, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA
Contributing Partner Projects
SANTO 2006 Biodiversity Expedition
Reports and Other Documents
Biodiversity Research Priorities for Coral Reef Ecosystems, U.S. Census of Marine Life workshop report, Kane’ohe Bay, HI, USA. This workshop contributed to the development of priorities for the international coral reef ocean realm field project.
Report of international project planning meeting, Okinawa, Japan, 27 June 2004 (during International Symposium on Coral Reef Biology)
U.S. CoML Workshop on Coral Reef Biodiversity, Kane’ohe Bay, HI, USA, 16-18 August 2004
