The importance of applying Standardised Integrative Taxonomy when describing marine benthic organisms and collecting ecological data

Abstract

The decline of morphologically based taxonomy is mainly linked to increasing species redundancy, which probably contributed to a worldwide disinterest in taxonomy, and to a reduction of funding for systematic biology and for expertise training. The present trend in the study of biodiversity is integrated taxonomy, which merges morphological and molecular approaches. At the same time, in many cases new molecular techniques have eclipsed the morphological approach. The application of Standardised Integrative Taxonomy, i.e. a rigorous, common method of description based on the integration between ecological and morphological characteristics, may increase the precision, accessibility, exploitability and longevity of the collected data, and favour the renaissance of taxonomy by new investments in biodiversity exploration.

Updating the current knowledge on the relationships between Haplosyllis chamaeleon Laubier, 1960 (Annelida, Syllidae) and Paramuricea clavata (Risso, 1826) (Cnidaria, Plexauridae) in the Mediterranean Sea

“…Therefore, our findings represent the first record for Italian and Croatian waters and extend the geographic range of H. chamaeleon to the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas (Castelli et al 2008;Micac and Musco 2010;Micac 2015). Except for the finding of the polychaete in association with P. grayi in the Iberian Atlantic coasts, our results contribute to confirm the probable overlapping distribution of H. chamaeleon with those of the purple and yellow host chromotypes (Di Camillo et al 2018b;Pica et al 2018), which are widely but exclusively distributed in the Mediterranean Sea (Ponti et al 2019). In Portofino, however, only part of the studied colonies of P. clavata seemed to host H. chamaeleon (although we cannot discard that, in a given individual, the worms could be present in unsampled branches) and the polychaetes were present all year round, with a particularly high infestation in summer.…”

Unravelling the taxonomic identity ofOphiothelaVerrill, 1867 (Ophiuroidea) along the Brazilian coast

“…danae from the type series shows that these species did not totally overlap on the LDA. Morphometry has been used as a powerful tool for delimiting species, particularly when applied with an integrative approach (Arribas et al ., 2013; Marinho et al ., 2017; Di Camillo et al ., 2018; Alitto et al ., 2019). In the case of O .…”

Spiophanes adriaticus, a new species from the Mediterranean Sea

“…An integrated taxonomic approach based on traditional morphological characters together with molecular marker species identification is needed to fully delineate species boundaries, quantifying diversity, and clarifying geographic distributions in the polychaetes considered (Di Camillo et al ., 2018). DNA barcoding has proved to be a useful method for species identification and consequently for rapid global biodiversity assessment (Hebert et al ., 2003).…”