Marine Biology Research: Taxonomy of marine organisms

Taxonomy is at the basis of all biological research. Having flourished particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, taxonomy has seen a revival recently due to a strong emphasis on biodiversity- and ecosystem-oriented research. To meet with challenges such as the ‘2010 biodiversity target’ that aims at reducing the loss of biological diversity on our planet, enhanced collaborative and coordinated efforts are needed to complete species inventories, map and analyse species co-occurrence and distribution patterns in space and time, identify biodiversity indicators, and explore, monitor, manage, and conserve marine habitats. Marine Biology Research aims to contribute to these efforts and provides in the current issue a compilation of papers reporting on biodiversity- and ecosystem-oriented studies, all of them featuring collaborative efforts in which taxonomists play a key role.

We devote this issue to the memory of Professor Anatoly Petrovich Andriashev, the renowned marine ichthyologist, biogeographer, and ecologist who died on 4th January 2009 at the age of 98. Dr Natalia Chernova, ichthyologist at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, one of his PhD students and a collaborator over many years, sent us the following notes in commemoration of this eminent personality:

Anatoly began his scientific education at the Leningrad State University and he continued his career at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg (ZIN). His first large ichthyological book was Ichthyofauna of the Bering Sea and Adjacent Waters, an Outline of the Zoogeography and History of Fish Fauna (1939). His doctoral dissertation, Fishes of the Northern Seas of the USSR (published as a book in 1954), became a classic in ichthyology. Later he concentrated on the Antarctic and participated in a number of Antarctic expeditions. As a result he wrote large reviews on fishes of the Antarctic (1965, 1987, 2003), and published taxonomic revisions on some groups of fishes (Myctophidae, Zoarcidae, Liparidae, Harpagiferidae etc.). The list of his scientific publications includes about 300 works. A selected bibliography appears at the end of this issue. He described more than 160 new fish taxa (subfamilies, genera, species, or subspecies). Thirty species of different marine animals (Pisces, Monogenea, Porifera, Isopoda, Amphipoda, and Pantopoda) are named in his honour.

Important concepts and theories in the biogeography and evolutionary ecology of marine biota established by Anatole Petrovich Andriashev are, for instance, the distinction between ancient and secondary deep-water species; the strong affinities among marine organisms with bipolar, amphiboreal, or amphipacific distributions, and the influences of physical isolation on the evolution of deep-sea organisms (concepts of pseudobathyal, pseudoabyssal, and thalassobathyal ecosystems); a hypothesis on the transoceanic (non-arctic) dispersal of secondary deep-water species of boreal Pacific origin into the North Atlantic and Arctic. He proposed the zoning of mid-water in the Southern ocean based on the distribution of mesopelagic fishes. He stated the existence of cryopelagic (pagophilic) fishes (using the lower surface of drifting ice as shelters and as a feeding area by cryopelagic crustaceans), both in the Arctic and Antarctic. The problems of geographic and bathymetric distribution of primitive forms within the group have been discussed. The concept of ‘glacial submergence’ hypothesises vertical shifts in the distribution and diversity of Antarctic ichthyofauna in response to ancient or recent glaciations – a more than timely contribution to today's discussions on the possible effects of climate change on marine organisms.

Anatoly was a person of encyclopedic knowledge, highly intellectual, a hard worker, a great humanist who loved poetry and classical music, a sports enthusiast, who enjoyed football and an active mountain hiker until his 80s. His friends and collaborators have fond memories of this modest, well-wishing and decent man – we will miss him!

Finally, an announcement of recent changes on our editorial board. We wish to thank Christoffer Schander, who left us as a subject editor, for invaluable assistance over many years. David Shale, professional wildlife photographer and marine scientist by education, has joined our editorial office as technical language editor to come up with the increasing needs for assistance in improving the language quality of submissions from non-native English speaking authors. Welcome!

Figure 1.  The family of the snailfishes, Liparidae, was one of A.P. Andriashev's favorite fish groups which he studied taxonomically and biogegographically. This blacksnout seasnail Paraliparis copei Goode & Bean, 1896 (104 mm SL) was photographed in a kreisel tank on board of the RV Seward Johnson, shortly after it had been collected alive during a dive with the Johnson Sealink submersible in Oceanographer Canyon, NW Atlantic, at about 800 m depth in fall 2005. The species was identified by Natalia V. Chernova, Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia. This specimen was later donated to the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (MCZ 165329; http://www.mcz.harvard.edu/Departments/Ichthyology/index.html) (Photographer: David Shale www.deepseaimages.co.uk)