Table 5. Summary of the diversity, state of knowledge, and expertise of the main taxonomic groups within the Brazilian Shelves subregion of South America.

Taxonomic group	No. species1	State of knowledge	No. introduced species	No. experts	No. ID guides2
Domain Archaea
Domain Bacteria (including Cyanobacteria)	2
Domain Eukarya
Kingdom Chromista
Phaeophyta	106	4		8
Kingdom Plantae
Chlorophyta	201	4		8
Rhodophyta	488	4		8
Angiospermae	14	5
Kingdom Protista (Protozoa)
Dinomastigota (Dinoflagellata)	49
Foraminifera	15
Kingdom Animalia
Porifera	400	3		15	2
Cnidaria	535	4		35	10
Platyhelminthes	45	2
Mollusca	1833	2 to 4	2	36	7
Annelida	987	4	8	23	5+1 in prep.
Crustacea	1966	3		6
Bryozoa	133	2
Echinodermata	254	3 to 4		13
Urochordata (Tunicata)	70	2
Other invertebrates	308
Vertebrata (Pisces)	1294	4		4+	3
Other vertebrates	178	4 to 5		40	2
SUBTOTAL	8878		10	196	29
TOTAL REGIONAL DIVERSITY 3	9103

¹Sources of the reports: databases, scientific literature, books, field guides, technical reports.

²Identification guides cited in References and in Table S7.

³Total regional diversity, including all taxonomic groups as reported in Table S6.