Exploration of the deep-sea fauna of Papua New Guinea Eric Pante, Laure Corbari, Justine Thubaut, Tin-Yam Chan, Ralph Mana, Marie-Catherine Boisselier, Philippe Bouchet, Sarah Samadi To cite this version: Eric Pante, Laure Corbari, Justine Thubaut, Tin-Yam Chan, Ralph Mana, et al.. Exploration of the deep-sea fauna of Papua New Guinea. Oceanography, Oceanography Society, 2012, 25 (3), pp.214-225. 10.5670/oceanog.2012.65. hal-00873493 HAL Id: hal-00873493 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00873493 Submitted on 15 Oct 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. OceThe OFFiciala MaganZineog OF the Oceanographyra Spocietyhy CITATION Pante, E., L. Corbari, J. Thubaut, T.-Y. Chan, R. Mana, M.-C. Boisselier, P. Bouchet, and S. Samadi. 2012. Exploration of the deep-sea fauna of Papua New Guinea. Oceanography 25(3):214–225, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2012.65. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2012.65 COPYRIGHT This article has been published inOceanography , Volume 25, Number 3, a quarterly journal of The Oceanography Society. Copyright 2012 by The Oceanography Society. All rights reserved. USAGE Permission is granted to copy this article for use in teaching and research. Republication, systematic reproduction, or collective redistribution of any portion of this article by photocopy machine, reposting, or other means is permitted only with the approval of The Oceanography Society. Send all correspondence to: [email protected] or The Oceanography Society, PO Box 1931, Rockville, MD 20849-1931, USA. doWnloaded From http://WWW.tos.org/oceanography REGULAR ISSUE FEATURE LEFT | A freshly collected specimen of the spider crab Oxypleurodon christiani, newly described from the BioPapua col- lections (Richer de Forges and Corbari, 2012). TOP AND BOTTOM | Specimens of king crabs preliminar- ily attributed to the genus Paralomis. Exploration of the Deep-Sea Fauna of Papua New Guinea BY EriC PANTE, LAURE CORBARI, JUSTinE THUBAUT, Tin -YA M C HA N , RALPH MANA, MAriE-CATHErinE BOISSELIER, PHILippE BOUCHET, And SARAH SAMAdi 214 Oceanography | Vol. 25, No. 3 AbSTRACT. Little is known of New Guinea’s deep benthic communities. In Vityaz expeditions collected biological fall 2010, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Institut de Recherche pour le benthic samples in the region, namely Développement, and University of Papua New Guinea spearheaded an international the hadal part of the New Britain Trench three-leg cruise, BioPapua, aimed at exploring the deep waters of eastern Papua in the Solomon Sea (Belyaev, 1972). New Guinea and its satellite islands. Special attention was given to faunal In fall 2010, the Muséum national assemblages associated with sunken wood and decomposing vegetation as well as d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) and seamount summits and slopes. In this article, we review the information available the Institut de Recherche pour le on the deep ecosystems of Papua New Guinea and summarize preliminary results Développement (IRD; France), in col- of the BioPapua cruise. laboration with the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG), put together NEw GUinEA And 1975). More recently, research conducted a team of international scientists to OUR UndERSTAndinG in New Guinea by Vojtech Novotný explore and describe the deep benthic OF BIOdivERSITY and collaborators on plant-insect host fauna of the Bismarck and Solomon Seas. The island of New Guinea has a spe- specificity has bearing on global bio- The research cruise BioPapua mobilized cial place in the heart of biologists. diversity numbers (e.g., Novotný et al., 11 scientists from six countries, who Biodiversity studies in New Guinea and 2002; Hamilton et al., 2010). And occupied 156 stations within 2–9°S and its satellite islands have helped shape then, of course, there is Tim Flannery’s 144–155°E (Figure 1). In this article, some of the pillars of evolutionary biol- immensely popular Throwim Way Leg, a we review the available information on ogy and ecological theory. In the late travelogue that perpetuates our percep- the deep-sea environments of Papua 1850s, New Guinea was the eastern- tion of New Guinea as a frontier of bio- New Guinea (PNG), and describe the most of Alfred Wallace’s destinations diversity exploration (Flannery, 1998). efforts deployed for the BioPapua cruise. during his exploration of the Malay The faunal diversity of the island’s terres- Archipelago, and his comparative obser- trial, shallow marine, and coral environ- THE DEEP-SEA EnvirONMENTS vations nurtured his theories on island ments is well known; the island is nestled OF PAPUA NEw GUinEA biogeography and the mechanisms pro- in the middle of the Coral Triangle, a PNG is situated in one of the most geo- moting evolution (Wallace, 1869, 1876). zone delineated by Taiwan, Bali, and the logically active regions in the world, In the 1920s, ornithologist Ernst Mayr Solomon Islands that is home to about where all possible types of plate bound- accumulated data on New Guinea birds three quarters of the world’s coral species aries can be observed (Tregoning et al., that would later appear in his Systematics (Veron et al., 2009). 2000). Most of the tectonic energy results and the Origin of Species, a landmark in In contrast, there is a surprising lack from the collision of the Indo-Australian the development of the modern synthe- of information on the deep-sea ecosys- and Pacific Plates, which entrap the sis (Mayr, 1942). Similarly, data from tems surrounding New Guinea and its Bismarck, Solomon, and Woodlark New Guinean ant diversity found their satellite islands. Symptomatically, the Plates (e.g., Tregoning et al., 2000; Hall, place in MacArthur and Wilson’s theory Challenger expedition sailed almost 2002). To the north, the Manus Basin of island biogeography (MacArthur and directly from Torres Strait to Hong Kong Wilson, 1967). Jared Diamond’s observa- and the Philippines; though it visited the The authors wish to dedicate this feature tions of the bird fauna of New Guinea Admiralty Islands in the Bismarck Sea to Christian Késiano Fitialeata, who and its satellite islands nourished his from March 4–10, 1875, only a single tragically passed away during the first leg work on the structure of ecological com- deepwater haul was made in 150 fath- of BioPapua. Christian had been a crew munities and fed the “Single Large Or oms; likewise, the Dutch Siboga expedi- member on R/V Alis for many years, and Several Small [SLOSS]” debate on the tion (1899–1900) did not sample east of was instrumental in the success of many application of the principles of bioge- Halmahera. In fact, of the “historical” cruises of the Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos ography in reserve design and conser- exploring expeditions, only the Danish program. He was a great companion at vation biology (Diamond, 1972, 1973, Galathea (1950–1952) and the Russian sea and on land, and is sorely missed. Oceanography | September 2012 215 vent endemic, a very meager inventory for an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 2 Manus totaling over 2 million km of benthic New Ireland surface below 100 m depth (Vanden Limana Kaia Mata na Taru Seamount Seamount Berghe, 2007; Edward Vanden Berghe, OBIS, pers. comm., 2011). The Bismarck Sea of Bismark (Manus Basin) Rabaul and Solomon Seas host many under- Madang water features such as seamounts, of New Britain Bougainville Sanguma which only a very few (e.g., Franklin and Seamount Papua New Guinea Lae Edison Seamounts) have been sampled, mapped, or even visited. Allain et al. (2008) recently reviewed the seamounts Solomon Sea of the southwestern Pacific by screening (Woodlark Basin) Port Moresby and cross checking 20 existing data sets, and listed 91 underwater features for the sunken wood fauna EEZ of PNG. No information is avail- cold seep fauna other benthic fauna able for 69 of those features. The 22 other Figure 1. Map of Papua New Guinea and its satellite islands. Dots, color-coded based on faunal type, features were further classified into sea- represent sampling stations. The inset provides a regional map. A marine geological map of PNG can be mounts (11), drowned atolls and banks found in Tregoning et al. (2000). (7 and 1), ridges (2), and a plateau. This lack of information on PNG seamounts recently formed (< 4 million years ago) German, Austrian, and French teams is reflected by the fact that no seamount in the Bismarck Sea. This sedimentary (Auzende et al., 2000, and references site is available on the Seamount Online basin is characterized by several active therein). These efforts mostly focused or Seamount Catalogue databases, not accretion zones (the Manus Spreading on the Pacmanus and Vienna Woods even the few that have been sampled. Center, the South Eastern Rift, and vent fields in the Bismarck Sea, and on the Western Rift zones) and is rapidly Franklin Seamount in the Solomon Sea. NEw GUinEAN DEEP BENTHIC spreading. To the south, the young The geological complexity and the FAUNA in A REGIONAL Woodlark Basin (formed < 2.5 million rapidity of change observed in the area BIOGEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT years ago) produces new oceanic crust, are of particular biogeographic interest, The current body of knowledge on while the Solomon Plate subducts both in terms of biological colonization New Guinean deep-sea benthic fauna beneath the Bismarck Plate, forming the and diversity of habitat (e.g., hydro- comes almost exclusively from the study New Britain chain.