Biodiversity of the freshwater invertebrates and its formation with reference to the Cladocera (Crustacea)

The aim of this project is to study recent biological diversity of freshwater fauna and general rules of its formation with reference to the Cladocera - microscopic crustaceans which are among most common and dominant animals of the plankton, benthos and neuston of the continental water bodies in all continents. A particular aim of this project is description and comparative analysis of the taxonomic, biogeographic and phylogeographic patterns in different taxa of the world cladoceran fauna. Objectives of the project are: (1) Taxonomic revisions of the groups of different rank (from different families) with different distributional patterns applying morphological and molecular-phylogenetic methods; (2) Inventories of the biological diversity of the cladocerans in different regions of the world using morphological analysis, genetic barcoding (COI gene) and mass determination of particular taxa and their hybrids by means of the allele-specific PRC of some nuclear genes; (3) Phylogeographic analysis of a series of species groups; (4) Analysis of available fossils from earlier-middle Caenozoic and Mesozoic, and from some permafrost Pleistocene-Holocene localities; (5) Inventory of revealed taxonomic, biogeographic and phylogeographic patters within particular regions and in global scale for a reconsideration of recent ideas on the biogeograpgy of the Cladocera, and, in prospect, of all the freshwater invertebrates; (6) Creation of a web-oriented database on the primary data and newly obtained results of the project, which will be located at the Web-portal of the Project, incorporated into the Internet-portal of A.N Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution. Our project is unique in part of taxon number and regions of the world under consideration (concerning Cladocera or any other groups of the freshwater invertebrates). Our group of investigators is directly originated from the alumi of the famous Russian researcher Prof. N.N. Smirnov. The "older" researches (although a maximum age of the researcher in our group is 48 years) of the group are definitively among word's leaders in the studies of the taxonomy and biogeography of the Cladocera. This project, together with the aforementioned formal task, is aimed to establish in the science a relatively small, but prospective, group of younger investigators.