The 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity will bring together scientists, practitioners, and policy makers to discuss and advance our understanding of the importance and current state of biodiversity in the marine environment. Through a mix of keynote sessions, contributed talks and posters, the conference program will address marine biodiversity across a deliberately wide range of relevant sectors. During the conference, there will be a special session on sustained observations of life as an integral component of coastal and ocean observing systems.

Session Chairs:
Patricia Miloslavich, University of Tasmania, Australia
Eduardo Klein, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela

Description:
The goal of this session is to show temporal trends in marine biodiversity, distribution and abundance based on long term observations and datasets. We welcome abstract submissions on case examples that illustrate how sustained ocean biodiversity observations help understand if, and how, ocean life is responding to global changes as well as on case examples of successful implementation of management practices based on long term data. Discussions will be focused on 1) the societal requirements for sustained biological ocean observations, 2) the need for coordination to maximize global implementation and coverage, 3) the technological developments needed to improve our observing capacity, 4) lessons learned from biological ocean observations, 5) examples of integration across disciplines, and 6) Data management. Abstracts submitted to this session may be considered for publication in a collection in Frontiers of Marine Science (section Marine Evolutionary Biology, Biogeography and Species Diversity). The topic of the collection will be: "Monitoring Marine Biodiversity from Microbes to Apex Predators: Why, What, and How" (Guest Editors: Thomas Malone, Anthony Knap).

Abstract submission deadline: 1 December 2017

Conference website: http://wcmb2018.org/index.html