Editorial: Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 99 , Issue 8

Our cover image is courtesy of the authors of a fascinating article on the structure of the ‘tunic’ of Clavelina species (Sakai et al., Reference Sakai, Kakiuchida, Harada, Nishikawa and Hirose2019). It reminds me that despite the longevity of the study of marine organisms we still have much to discover about the flora and fauna of the oceans. The theme is also picked up in two other papers in this issue with the first report of the brooding of eggs in the deep sea polychaete Anguillosyllis (Fukuda & Barroso, Reference Fukuda and Barroso2019) and descriptions of the larvae of Thalassocaris lucida (Landeira et al., Reference Landeira, Yang, Komai, Chan and Wakabayashi2019). For marine scientists understanding of organisms is fundamental to understanding the functioning of this key global ecosystem. The oceans face a variety of pressures and in common with other ecosystems a consequent loss of biodiversity, with unknown consequences to humanity (Cardinale et al., Reference Cardinale, Duffy, Gonzalez, Hooper, Perrings, Venail, Narwani, Mace, Tilman, Wardle, Kinzig, Daily, Loreau, Grace, Larigauderie, Srivastava and Naeem2012). We welcome publication of works detailing the minutiae of marine life and support the need to continue to work rapidly to document the wealth of our marine resources.