CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In this paper we attempt to give an overview of the research being carried out at the moment by a group ofArgentinean scientists working on the subjects of marine biodiversity and oceanography, When we starteddistributing the idea of the Census of Marine Life (CoML), following the Symposium held during theIAPSO-IABO conference in Mar del Plata in October 2001, we found a wide response in the marinescientific cornmunity. We gathered then information about running research projects, as well as interests forfuture work in the context ofthe CoML, from ea. 70 scientists (Appendix 1) belonging to twelve institutionslocated along the Argentinean coast (Appendix Il, Figure 1). To make good use ofthis valuable infonnationwe took the approach of showing what is currently being pursued in marine biodiversity in Argentina andwhich subjects are considered priority to follow up by researchers working in the area. Hence, ibis is not ahistorical update on the knowledge of marine biodiversity, but certainly it gives an idea of where it hasreached and where it pretends to go. We agree that building an extensive database of what is known onmarine biodiversity in the region is a necessity, but we realised also that this is a whole project on its own,and therefore we decided to include it into the proposals for future work (see Future Work in this paper),We should emphasise that this synthesis is not exhaustive in content of subjects being studied or in thenumber of researchers working in marine biodiversity in the country. We believe, however, that it is arepresentative sample ofthe knowledge in marine science in Argentina today. This is a starting point for theCoML work in South America and we hope that as it develops it will be improved by the activeparticipation, advice and experience of many other scientists in the region.

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