With fieldwork around the world, we explore the diversity and distribution of marine fauna. In the Maldives, for example, two weeks of sampling led to over 100 species of snails and slugs, half of which had never been recorded in the archipelago before (Cunha et al. 2023 Diversity). We document this biodiversity with vouchers in natural history collections, photos of live specimens, and genetic barcodes for all species (many of which might have never been sequenced before). Several new species are discovered and described.

Other targeted areas include the Canary Islands (results coming soon) and the Abrolhos Archipelago, the largest and most diverse reef complex of the South Atlantic, where we identified the patterns of distribution of macrofaunal invertebrates in time and space (Cunha et al. 2013 CSR).