Historic diversity of pelagic copepods across the Arabian Gulf

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The Arabian Gulf (hereafter “Gulf”) is a young ocean basin noted for its low biodiversity for many marine organisms. Natural and anthropogenic factors, such as shallow depth, high water temperatures, high salinity, and rapid urbanization and industrialization of coastal areas, are considered as stressors on biodiversity of the Gulf. It is important to investigate the broader distributional patterns of key organisms in the basin to understand how those communities might change over time. In this study, we document the diversity and summarize the distribution of marine pelagic copepods, a crucial component of marine ecosystems, throughout the basin. A comprehensive review of 82 publications covering over 110 years of zooplankton research in the Gulf was conducted to generate a taxonomic database of all known pelagic copepods from within the basin and assess taxa distributions. A total of 280 unique copepod sampling stations were identified in the Gulf, with 144 in the Western Gulf and 136 in the Eastern Gulf. A total of 107 taxa of copepods from 25 families and 43 genera were recorded from the Gulf. The most diverse copepod families included Pontellidae, Acartiidae, Paracalanidae, Coryceidae, and Oithonidae. We documented little overlap in copepod distribution across the Western and Eastern Gulf. A total of 47 taxa were exclusive to the Western Gulf, 32 were exclusive to the Eastern Gulf, and just 30 were found in both Western and Eastern regions of the Gulf. The discrepancies between copepod diversity in the Western and Eastern Gulf are discussed, and recommendations for future research on copepods in the entire Gulf are presented.