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

克拉里昂-克利珀顿区位于太平洋中部的深渊，是世界上最大的海底开采对未来绿色经济转型至关重要的金属（例如镍和钴）的前沿。目前，在这片600万平方公里、深度4000-5000米的区域内，共有16个勘探许可证。要成功监管这一潜在巨大的新兴行业，一个关键的科学知识缺口是对生活在那里的动物的基线分类、生物多样性和种群连通性的了解（Glover等人2018年），这些动物主要是深海无脊椎动物，如多毛类、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NERC资助的500万英镑的重点主题“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无脊椎动物进行详细的科学研究。这将包括关于科学新物种的详细分类和系统发育的章节，整个CCZ区域尺度系统发育，功能和β多样性的分析，目标分类群种群水平连通性的分析以及潜在海底采矿影响的建模。这项工作将引起科学期刊的广泛兴趣，并通过联合王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.