EarthRef.org Digital Archive (ERDA) -- Seamount ecology

Description
One of the reasons why seamounts have been the focus of substantial ecological research is that they are thought to represent unique communities, supporting assemblages of species that are distinct from the surrounding seafloor. In this keynote presentation during the First SBN Workshop, Karen Stocks summarizes a literature review to examine three aspects of community structure ¿ biodiversity, endemism, and biogeographic affinities ¿ to ask how distinct seamount communities really are. The topic has clear management implications, for example determining whether marine protected areas on seamounts are needed and how they should be placed. Describing and comparing seamount community structure also has theoretical implications: once patterns are determined, they can be compared to predictions from various biogeographic theories to understand how these theories may be useful for predicting from the handful of studied seamounts to the tens of thousands of unknown ones.

Project -- Meetings and Workshops -- SBN Workshops
The goal of the Seamount Biogeosciences Network (SBN) is to bring together all the diverse science disciplines involved in seamount research, to communicate about and discuss seamount science, and to explore innovative ways to network amongst the diverse communities working on seamounts.