Ocean Species Discoveries 1-12 - A primer for accelerating marine invertebrate taxonomy

Discoveries of new species often depend on one or a few specimens, leading to delays as researchers wait for additional context, sometimes for decades. There is currently little professional incentive for a single expert to publish a stand-alone species description. Additionally, while many journals accept taxonomic descriptions, even specialist journals expect insights beyond the descriptive work itself. The combination of these factors exacerbates the issue that only a small fraction of marine species are known and new discoveries are described at a slow pace, while they face increasing threats from accelerating global change. To tackle this challenge, this first compilation of (OSD) presents a new collaborative framework to accelerate the description and naming of marine invertebrate taxa that can be extended across all phyla. Through a mode of publication that can be speedy, taxonomy-focused and generate higher citation rates, OSD aims to create an attractive home for single species descriptions. This (SOSA) approach emphasises thorough, but compact species descriptions and diagnoses, with supporting illustrations and with molecular data when available. Even basic species descriptions carry key data for distributions and ecological interactions (e.g., host-parasite relationships) besides universally valid species names; these are essential for downstream uses, such as conservation assessments and communicating biodiversity to the broader public. This paper presents thirteen marine invertebrate taxa, comprising one new genus, eleven new species and one re-description and reinstatement, covering wide taxonomic, geographic, bathymetric and ecological ranges. The taxa addressed herein span three phyla (Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata), five classes, eight orders and twelve families. Apart from the new genus, an updated generic diagnosis is provided for four other genera. The newly-described species of the phylum Mollusca are Vončina, (Polyplacophora, Mopaliidae), Chen, Watanabe & Tsuda, (Gastropoda, Lepetodrilidae), Chen, Watanabe & Tsuda, (Gastropoda, Phenacolepadidae) and Machado & Sigwart, (Bivalvia, Lyonsiellidae). The new taxa of the phylum Arthropoda are all members of the subphylum Crustacea: Lörz & Engel, (Amphipoda, Lepechinellidae), Tandberg & Jażdżewska, (Amphipoda, Maeridae), Williams & Landschoff, (Isopoda, Bopyridae), Wenz, Knauber & Riehl, (Isopoda, Haploniscidae), Jonannsen, Riehl & Brandt, (Isopoda, Macrostylidae), Kaiser, Kniesz & Kih