Module 3: Understanding a location's biodiversity

The message
Understanding a location’s biodiversity is essential to understanding how best to conserve it.

The experience
Hundreds of shells are clustered together. The largest measure several inches across, while the smallest appears as just a tiny brown dot when viewed through a magnifying lens. The core grouping includes specimens from 627 species—the biodiversity in mollusks initially expected for the Florida Key’s Marine Sanctuary. Through lighting changes or an interactive element, a hidden set of species is revealed. These additional specimens create the full 1,300 species—and counting!—actually identified in the Keys.

The story
When the Florida Keys project began in the mid-1980s, the best data on the region estimated biodiversity at 627 species. Rüdiger Bieler and his team began a longitudinal study to provide better information about this region, for which no systematic data existed. To do this, they started by reviewing collections at number of American museums to piece together what had been found where in the past. For example, the Carnegie Museum had a woman’s seashell collection from the 1930s. While her species identification for the shells weren’t always accurate, her locality information about where and when they were collected was wonderfully detailed and provided important background data on what had lived in the Keys decades ago.

With a picture of the Keys’ past biodiversity, the team could begin diving and documenting. By comparing new finds to the collections information, an understanding of species loss and newly introduced species began to emerge. This directly informs conservation management: Without this research, 627 species would have been the benchmark for “successful” conservation—and 673 species might have gone extinct with no record.

Rüdiger’s colleagues have also been able to track how changes in water quality over several years effects different bivalve populations. Their research on mollusk families and efforts to clarifying taxonomy helped protect a range of threatened file clams from a loop hole in Florida’s fishing laws.