European Register of Marine Species

The foundation of biodiversity research and management is correctly identifying and naming species, but different names are used for the same species, and the same names for different species, in different parts of Europe. The present volume is the first coordinated attempt to list the marine species – plants, algae, invertebrates, vertebrates – from all over the European seas, from the Arctic and Iceland to the Canaries, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The main part of the volume is a checklist of some 30,000 valid species, for certain groups supplemented by synonymies and basic distribution information. A bibliographical section points to ca. 700 identification guides. The volume is the collective work of 170 persons who contributed their expertise to the European Register of Marine Species (ERMS), a project part-funded by the European Commission (EC) Marine Science and Technology (MAST) research programme. It is anticipated that the European Register of Marine Species will become a standard reference tool for marine biodiversity training, research and management in Europe. The present paper version is published in parallel with an electronic version available from the project web site http://erms.biol.soton.ac.uk.