Section 1. Outcomes On land, except for microorganisms, the distribution of most species is known. This knowledge is the foundation on which ecological research builds. It also provides crucial information about the environmental consequences of, for example, mining in a watershed or building a dam. In most marine habitats, much less information is available, and the deeper the habitat, the less is known. For the animals living in the seabed in the deep sea, the lack of information is so acute that scientists disagree even on the scale of distributions. Some believe that large numbers of species inhabit areas of only a few tens of square miles; others believe that most if not all species have much larger ranges. Until the correct answer is known, ecologists will have great difficulty understanding such basic issues as the factors that control speciesÆ ranges in this huge habitat, and they will not be able to predict the consequences of human use of the deep sea, for example, as a waste dump. One goal of the project was to provide a better assessment of speciesÆ range sizes by combining the traditional approach, which uses morphological features to decide which individuals belong to the same species, with a new approach that uses genetic information for this purpose. As a result of the combination, if the morphological data indicate that two individuals from different locations belong to the same species, this finding can be checked with the genetic data. The project results have shown that many deep-sea species occur at locations 100Æs of miles apart and at least one species occurs at two locations separated by 1000 miles. The results therefore support the view that many species living in the deep seabed are widely distributed. A broader impact is that the project results will help policy makers decide how the deep sea should be used. The project also contributed to the infrastructure of science through the development of a new method for extraction of genetic material from copepods and by training two graduate students and 14 undergraduate assistants. Section 2. Products other than publications For this project, samples of deep-sea sediment were collected at 2700-m and 3700-m depth off southern Oregon, northern California, central California, and southern California. (See http://www.fsu.edu/news/2008/09/24/deep.sea for a blog of the work at sea.) The analysis of these samples resulted in a data set that consists of the abundances in each sample of harpacticoid copepods, nematodes of the family Desmoscolecidae, all other nematodes, ostracods, kinorhynchs, polychaetes, molluscs of the class Aplacophora, all other molluscs, tanaids, isopods, amphipods, and cumaceans, as well as the grain-size distribution of the sediment and the amount of food in the sediment. A library of digital images of harpacticoid copepods was created. The genetic data will be deposited in the national databank. Section 3. Anticipated publications Easton, E. E., D. Thistle, T. Spears (in manuscript) The mitochondrial genomes of Amphiascoides atopus and Schizopera knabeni reveal characteristics shared by Harpacticoida and Poecilostomatoida. Easton, E. E., D. Thistle (in preparation) An effective method for retaining morphological vouchers from genomic DNA extraction of copepods. Easton, E. E., D. Thistle, T. Spears (in preparation) Deep-sea copepod speciesÆ ranges: genetic structure and connectivity over 100Æs of kilometers. Easton, E. E., D. Thistle, M. Rohal (in preparation) Macrofaunal abundances on the continental rise off the coast of California. Rohal, M., D. Thistle, E. E. Easton (in manuscript) Meiofaunal abundances on the continental rise off the coast of California, including some unexpected results for benthic copepods and ostracods. Rohal, M., D. Thistle, E. E. Easton (in manuscript) On the use of Ludox® for the extraction of metazoan meiofauna from deep-sea...
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