INTRODUCTION
The Taxonomic Guide to benthic polychaetes of the Falkland Islands is an extension of the benthic environmental assessment and monitoring programmes (EAMPs) accompanying oil exploration in the region. A large collection of around 25000 polychaete specimens resulted from two benthic surveys carried out in 2011-2012 and processed at the Natural History Museum (NHM) London. Besides the immediate goal of EAMPs, such collections offer a great potential for systematics and biodiversity research, opportunity which is often not realized. The aim of this current project was to make benthic collections from these EAMPs available for further research. Polychaete worms are the first group to be processed. The project has two main goals:
- Taxonomic guide to standardize identification.
- Curation of sample collection at NHM London to facilitate access to these collections.
The two objectives are closely linked. The need for standardized taxonomic guide is immediately linked to EAMPs, which are carried out by a number of Environmental Consultancies (ECs). Simply put, it provides a single source for identification of polychaete, making sure that everyone calls the same species with the same name.
Funding for this work was made available through The South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) and the Natural History Museum, London.
The Falklands Fauna
Marine benthic fauna from the Falklands area has been considered to be part of the Magellanic province, but links were also drawn to the Southern Ocean and sub-Antarctic fauna. Available taxonomic monographs for these regions (Hartman 1966; 1967; 1978; Hartmann-Schröder 1962; 1956; Hartmann-Schröder & Rosenfeldt 1988; 1989; 1990; 1991; 1992) are in need of an update. Recent taxonomic efforts concentrated on the polychaete family Ampharetidae (Schüller and Jirkov, 2013) exemplified the problems summed up in the following statement: “The Southern Ocean and also Patagonian waters represent an interesting geographical region, as many species recorded from these areas were originally described from the Northern hemisphere (compare e.g., Hartman 1966; 1967; 1978; Hartmann-Schröder & Rosenfeldt 1988; 1989; 1990; 1991; 1992). These records from Southern waters may possibly be the result of misidentification and give some substance for the discovery of new species from already well-defined genera. During the 20th and early 21st centuries, frequent expeditions were undertaken in the Southern Ocean. In the samples from the ANDEEP I–III expeditions to the deep Weddell Sea (2002, 2005) over 450 ampharetid specimens belonging to over 20 species (Schüller 2008; Schüller et al. 2009) have been found, many of which are undescribed”. We concur that this is also a problem for other polychaete families. Therefore returning to the first objective – the taxonomic guide- is to provide a standardized taxonomic resource, particularly those species that are currently not formally described (“the unknowns”).
The large number of species new to science, outdated taxonomic literature and need for taxonomic revisions as scientific knowledge evolves demonstrate the need for accessibility of collections such as those from Falkland Islands to as many taxonomic experts as possible. Making collections available to the research community is an important part of the curatorial function of institutions such as NHM London, which was the second objective of this project. The taxonomic guides itself is an identification tool and its aim was not to solve taxonomic problems, which are merely highlighted, stressing the need for future work by taxonomic experts for particular groups.