ABSTRACT
The Indo-Pacific Super-Region is the largest single biogeographical unit in the world's oceans, and encompasses the entire Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf, the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, from southern Japan to northern Australia and east to Easter Island. Extending as far west as Palau, as far north as Midway Island, Hawaiian Islands, as far south as Easter Island (Rapa Nui), and as far east as Salas-y-Gomez Island, Chile, this vast region also encompasses all of the islands in French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Wallis and Futuna, Kiribati, Tonga, the Marshall Islands, and hundreds of others. Named for the cultural area of Polynesia (“Many Islands”) in the Central Pacific, the Polynesian Molluscan Province extends from Palau in the west, to the Marianas and Marshall Islands in the north, to Tonga and Niue in the south, and to the Tuamotu and Austral Islands in the east and encompasses literally thousands of small volcanic islands and coral atolls.
