Global habitat suitability for framework-forming cold-water corals.

ABSTRACT: Predictive habitat models are increasingly being used by conservationists, researchers and governmental bodies to identify vulnerable ecosystems and species' distributions in areas that have not been sampled. However, in the deep sea, several limitations have restricted the widespread utilisation of this approach. These range from issues with the accuracy of species presences, the lack of reliable absence data and the limited spatial resolution of environmental factors known or thought to control deep-sea species' distributions. To address these problems, global habitat suitability models have been generated for five species of framework-forming scleractinian corals by taking the best available data and using a novel approach to generate high resolution maps of seafloor conditions. High-re

SUBMITTER: Davies AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3078123 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature