Taxonomy, biodiversity and population connectivity in the world's largest deep-sea mining frontier the Clarion Clipperton Zone, central

位于中太平洋深渊的克拉里昂-克利珀顿区是世界上最大的海底金属开采前沿，这些金属对未来的绿色经济转型至关重要（如镍和钴）。目前，在这600万平方公里的区域内，有16个合同勘探许可证，深度为4000- 5000米。成功监管这一潜在的巨大新产业的一个关键科学知识缺口是对生活在那里的动物的基线分类学、生物多样性和种群连通性的理解（格洛弗等人，2018年），这些动物主要是深海无脊椎动物，如多毛类动物、棘皮动物、软体动物和甲壳类动物（Wiklund等人，2019年）。该项目的学生将为一个由500万英镑资助的NERC重点主题“SMARTEX”做出贡献，参加太平洋的研究考察，并对收集的大型动物和巨型动物无脊椎动物进行详细的科学工作。这将包括关于以下内容的章节：科学新物种的详细分类学和生物遗传学;分析整个克拉里昂-克利珀顿区的区域范围系统发育、功能和β多样性;分析目标分类群的种群一级连通性;以及建立潜在海底采矿影响的模型。这项工作将引起科学期刊的广泛兴趣，并通过英国政府和国际海底管理局产生直接的政策影响。

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific abyss, is the world's largest frontier for the seabed mining of metals critical to a future green economy transition (e.g nickel and cobalt). There are currently 16 contracted licences for exploration in this 6 million sq km region, at depths of 4000-5000m. A critical scientific knowledge gap for the successful regulation of this potentially vast new industry is an understanding of the baseline taxonomy, biodiversity and population connectivity of the animals that live there (Glover et al 2018), which are dominated by abyssal invertebrates such as polychaetes, echinoderms, molluscs and crustaceans (Wiklund et al 2019). The student on this project will contribute to a large 5m GBP funded NERC highlight topic 'SMARTEX', taking part in research expeditions to the Pacific and undertaking detailed scientific work on the macrofauna and megafaunal invertebrates collected. This will include chapters on the detailed taxonomy and phylogenetics of species new to science, analysis of regional-scale phylogenetic, functional and beta diversity across the CCZ, analysis of population-level connectivity in target taxa and modelling the impacts of potential seabed mining. The work will be of i broad interest to scientific journals as well as have direct policy impacts through UK Government and with the International Seabed Authority.