DEEP-SEA SPONGES BIOGEOGRAPHY

Biogeography is a multidisciplinary science which aims to understand the distributional pattern of biodiversity on Earth and its evolutionary history. Biological diversity is understood as the outcome of life history on Earth expressed through time and space. Biogeography studies such diversity on a spacio-temporal scale of the Earth.

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In the oceans, organisms are divided into pelagic and benthic ones, the same approach being used in marine biogeography. Sponge and most marine biodiversity  is found in the benthic environment and the geomorphology and environmental conditions of such environments influence them and their distributional patterns.

 

There is a strong correlation between the study of biodiversity and our ability to understand their distributional pattern in the ocean as well as the biogeography of e.g. sponges on the ocean basin scale. Therefore, my primary aim here is to understand the distributional patterns of deep-sea sponges as well as to infer general patters of deep-sea benthic fauna.