A literature review of the marine annelids of the Ryukyu Islands: still at the “early-bird” stage

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Description

Marine biodiversity is threatened and comprehensive assessments of marine species are needed for biodiversity management and research priorities, especially for little-studied areas and taxa. The region of the Ryukyu Islands, in subtropical southern Japan, is a marine biodiversity hotspot, however most marine invertebrate taxa here can be considered grossly understudied. Despite the known high diversity of marine annelids, both in terms of species richness and ecological functions, a review of the knowledge accumulated on them in the Ryukyus is not yet available. To provide an overview of past research and identify gaps, we reviewed 149 publications related to the topic and compiled 1986 literature records. Despite large discrepancies in groups and environments studied, we found indications of high diversity of marine annelids in the Ryukyus, with 445 nominal species recorded, including 59 described from the region, comprising approximately a quarter of Japan’s marine annelid fauna. However, unequal sampling effort was observed across the Ryukyus, with Okinawa-jima and Amami-Oshima being the most well-investigated islands, whereas Yakushima and Miyako-jima were almost completely uninvestigated. Intertidal and sand bottoms were the most well-studied environments, while coral reefs have been scarcely studied. Much more research is needed to understand marine annelid diversity in the Ryukyus, with taxonomic work needed for all families supported by sampling expeditions to underexplored islands and environments, with follow-up studies on ecology, reproduction, and marine natural products also sorely needed. Thus, despite indications of very high diversity, we conclude that marine annelid research in the Ryukyus is still nascent.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,345 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

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How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Fourreau, C.J.L.F., Jimi, N., Goto, R., Sato, M. & Reimer, J.D. (2025). A literature review of the marine annelids of the Ryukyu Islands: still at the “early-bird” stage. Available from https://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/bismal/e/dataset/Univ_Ryukyus_annelids_ryukyu. Accessed on YYYY-MM-DD.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

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Keywords

Occurrence; Occurrence

Contacts

Chloé Fourreau

Metadata Provider ●
Originator ●
Point Of Contact

University of the Ryukyus

1 Sembaru

903-0213 Nishihara Cho

Okinawa

Japan

chloisf@gmail.com

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS

Alternative Identifiers	https://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/ipt/resource?r=univ_ryukyus_annelids_ryukyu