Indo-West Pacific
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The Indo-West Pacific, or IWP, is a zoogeographical region spanning the entire Indian Ocean including the Red Sea and the Pacific Ocean as far as the Caroline Islands but short of the Marshall Islands. [1] The IWP is an important in studies of marine zoogeography because it has an exceptionally high species diversity, including 3000 species of fish, compared with around 1200 in the next most species rich region, the Western Atlantic, and around 500 species of reef building corals, compared with about 50 species in the Western Atlantic. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors.. Term : Indo-West Pacific. FishBase. Retrieved on 2006-09-07.
- ^ Helfman G., Collette B., & Facey D.: The Diversity of Fishes, Blackwell Publishing, pp 274-276, 1997, ISBN 0-86542-256-7
