Biodiversity and biogeography of Ostrocoda (Crustacea) from the deep NW Pacific

The Northwest (NW) Pacific is now one of the better investigated deep-sea areas in the world. More than 20 expeditions have been performed in this region on board the RV Vityaz in the midt-wentieth century (Monin 1983). Subsequently, the diverse and abundant deep-sea benthic fauna found in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench (KKT) and the adjacent abyssal plain, one of the most productive oceanic regions in the world, and has been described in numerous publications, e.g. in volumes of the transactions of the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology 1955, 1970, 1971 (Sokolova 1976, 1981). In these volumes, information on biotic and abiotic environmental parameters of this unique area, such as the composition of taxa, first data on hydrology, topography, chemical characteristics, and organic matter of the bottom water, and the characteristics of sediments of the KKT area, are presented. Based on these data, a checklist of free-living invertebrate species of the Russian Far Eastern Seas was published (Sirenko 2013). Recently (2010-2016), four international deep-sea expeditions to the NW Pacific were performed as German-Russian joint ventures for the study of the composition of meio-, macro and megafauna.