Predicting diversity in benthic macro-scale communities associated with mussel matrices in three Pacific ecoregions

Scottish Funding Council. Grant Number: HR09011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Appreciations are due to the staff members of the Reserva Punta San Juan and the Center for Environmental Sustainability of Universidad de Cayetano Heredia in Lima Peru for their assistance with permitting and fieldwork, to the Ministero de la Producción de Peru for the permit to collect marine specimens, the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales for permission to work in the Reserve, Shaleyla Kalez of EcoOceanica for her assistance with logistics in the northernmost ecoregion of Peru and Prof. Aldo Pacheco from the Universidad de Cayetano for his assistance with logistics and species identification in Antofagasta Chile (Bruno Ibaniez-Erquiaga MSc (UPCH) for his assistance in the field). This study was partially supported by the University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences. We would also like to thank the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland). MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Data are available from authors at request.Peer reviewedPublisher PD