You can't protect what you don't know: Strategies for biodiversity inventories in poorly known marine areas facing global changes.

Abstract

The world is facing a double crisis of climate change and biodiversity erosion. Global environmental changes have sparked an unprecedented and ongoing loss of biodiversity. To minimize this alarming trend, a deeper understanding of biodiversity is essential for effective conservation and management strategies. However, major taxonomic knowledge gaps remain, particularly in remote and understudied regions such as the Southern Ocean. Without knowledge on the marine biota living within these ecosystems, it becomes challenging to assess the success of existing marine protected areas or to design new ones that can address both current and future threats. This paper aims to highlight the critical role of taxonomy and species identification in biodiversity research and for the implementation of effective conservation and protection measures for vulnerable and sensitive ecosystems. We address key challenges of the taxonomy field and provide recommendations to improve the characterization of marine diversity in poorly known and unexplored environments.