Identifying patterns and drivers of the tropical biodiversity and biogeography across the Pacific Ocean: Ostracoda as a model system

• Applicant: Dr. Skye Yunshu Tian, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Palaeontology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566002283

Across the tropics, the “hottest” marine biodiversity hotspot (an area characterized with disproportionately high species richness) is located in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA), which underpins a classic ‘bullseye’ pattern of decreasing diversity from this center to the periphery of the vast Indo-Pacific. The formation and maintenance of such a steep longitudinal diversity gradient has attracted the interest of ecologists and evolutionary biologists alike, however, the key question remains about its ecological and historical drivers, and more importantly about its future under different scenarios of anthropogenic climate changes. In this project, we first aim to quantitatively identify the longitudinal patterns of biodiversity and biogeography across the IAA-tropical Pacific Ocean using benthic ostracods as the model organism. We will then disentangle the potential environmental and geographic mechanisms that govern the origin and distribution of tropical marine biodiversity to shape the large-scale biological patterns. Our findings will reveal the role of the fully developed, geographically center-placed, and east-west connected biodiversity hotspot (i.e., the IAA) in producing and sustaining an exceedingly large regional species pool of the Indo-Pacific, so as to explicitly test the center of origin hypothesis. With a comprehensive dataset and state-of-the-art statistics, this project is going to provide a new perspective to explore the evolutionary source-sink relationship between the rich hotspot area and depauperated peripheral regions, and thus contribute to a holistic understanding of the tropical dynamics of biodiversity and biogeography at regional-global scales. Knowledge gained from this project will become solid guidelines for conservation efforts to prepare the most fantastic marine biodiversity hotspot of our planet for ongoing and future challenges.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: China (Hong Kong), Taiwan
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Martin Langer
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Chih-Lin Wei; Professor Dr. Moriaki Yasuhara