Indo-Thái Bình Dương rạn san hô trên toàn cầu có chứa các mức cao nhất của đa dạng sinh học của bất kỳ hệ sinh thái biển, với trung tâm đa dạng sinh học này nằm xung quanh quần đảo Malaysia, Indonesia, và Việt Nam. Great Barrier Reef (GBR) là một phần của địa sinh học khu vực Indo-Thái Bình Dương, và chứa một tập hợp con của các loài Indo-Thái Bình Dương được tìm thấy trong hầu hết các loài phong phú các khu vực xa hơn về phía bắc, cũng như các loài không được tìm thấy bất cứ nơi nào khác, nhưng. | 9 Biodiversity on the Great Barrier Reef Large-Scale Patterns and Turbidity-Related Local Loss of Soft Coral Taxa Katharina Fabricius and Glenn De ath CONTENTS Field Analytical Spatial Patterns in Soft Coral Richness and the Influence of Turbidity and Spatial Distribution of Turbidity and Patterns in Soft and Hard Coral Depth-Related INTRODUCTION Indo-Pacific coral reefs contain globally the highest level of biodiversity of any marine ecosystem with the centre of this biodiversity located around the archipelago of Malaysia Indonesia and the Philippines. The Great Barrier Reef GBR is part of the Indo-Pacific biogeographic region and contains a subset of the Indo-Pacific taxa found in the most species-rich areas farther north as well as species that are not found anywhere else but on the GBR Veron 1995 . Around 2800 coral reefs extensive seagrass areas species-rich soft- and hard-bottom inter-reefal and lagoonal ecosystems 127 2001 by CRC Press LLC 128 Oceanographic Processes of Coral Reefs continental slopes and pelagic ecosystems are all represented within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park which is the world s largest World Heritage Area Wachenfeld et al. 1998 . Because of its vast size 348 000 km2 area stretching over 2000 km or 14 of latitude and its high biodiversity surveys and species inventories have been carried out only on a few taxonomic groups in small proportions of the marine park. Some areas are still uncharted even for shipping purposes. Large-scale systematic mapping of the major biotic groups such as scleractinian corals and fishes only began on a large scale in the 1990s. Other groups which are extremely species-rich such as sponges crustaceans echinoderms or molluscs remain largely unmapped although some of these taxa are likely to hold key positions in the ecosystem. In this
