Editorial: biodiversity of Caribbean coral reefs (with a focus on the Dutch Caribbean)

(2007). b The Dutch Caribbean composed of the Leeward Islands (Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire) in the Southern Caribbean and the Windward Islands (Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Maarten) with Saba Bank in the Eastern Caribbean Although the Caribbean has less species than the Indo-Pacific, this does not imply that the marine fauna and flora of the Caribbean are sufficiently well known or that there is little need for additional biodiversity research on Caribbean reefs. Many marine exotic species in the Caribbean can easily be overlooked because they usually consist of invertebrates and algae that are not easily recognized (Debrot et al. 2011) and, therefore, they are usually discovered when they become invasive and their populations reach outbreak proportions. Because of such harmful species introductions and possible local species extinctions on Caribbean coral reefs (e.g., Carpenter et al. 2008), there is a need for baseline surveys of local reef biota with specimen sampling and follow-up monitoring in order to be able to accurately notice when species arrive or disappear (Hoeksema et al. 2011; Rocha et al. 2014; Sampey and Marsh 2015; Ballard et al. 2016). Caribbean coral reefs also deserve biodiversity research attention because not all of their species have been reported yet, and these species are likely to participate in hitherto unknown interspecific associations (e.g., Thomas and Klebba 2007; Snijders and Fransen 2010; Ivanenko et al. 2017; Montano et al. 2017b) or appear to have incomplete geographical and bathymetrical distribution range information involving new records for the Atlantic (e.g., Montano et al. 2017a; Van der Loos and Prud’homme van Reine 2017). Together with St. Maarten and Saba, it belongs to the windward islands in the eastern Caribbean, which also includes the submerged Saba Bank, while Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire belong to the Leeward Islands in the southern Caribbean (Fig. 1b).