National Taiwan Ocean University announced on the 25th that Professor Chen Tian-ren, a distinguished professor at the Institute of Marine Biology, was recently awarded the Outstanding Research Award by the International Society of Crustacean Biologists. This award is the highest honor in the field of crustaceans, making Chen the 33rd recipient since its establishment in 1982 and the first representative from Taiwan to receive this prestigious award.
According to the press release issued by National Taiwan Ocean University, Chen Tian-ren’s extensive research on the classification and evolutionary relationships of crustaceans has had a significant impact on the field. Not only has he been listed among the top 2% of scientists globally for three consecutive years by Stanford University in the United States, but he has also been ranked as the number one animal scientist and veterinarian in Taiwan by Research.com for three consecutive years.
Located in the tropical and subtropical regions, Taiwan is surrounded by countries with the highest marine biodiversity such as the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, and the Coral Triangle region of New Guinea. Despite this, in 1992, Taiwan had only identified 627 species of shrimp and crab, accounting for merely 3.6% of the known crustaceans worldwide. Over the past 40 years, Chen Tian-ren and his team have actively conducted surveys and collected crustaceans in Taiwan, discovering at least 1,800 species, approximately one-tenth of the global total. This highlights Taiwan’s significance in the field of marine biodiversity research.
Up to now, Chen Tian-ren has published 332 research papers, including 288 in SCI journals, authored 9 book chapters, and identified 1 new genus, 13 new subgenera, 5 new sub-species, 177 new species, and 2 new subspecies. The research specimens and data collected by him are preserved at the university, making it the largest and most comprehensive collection in the country. He has also published 7 guides on Taiwan’s crustaceans and, with the support of the National Science Council, established the Taiwan Large Crustacean Database website, which is vital for researching Taiwan’s marine life and enhancing its international reputation.
Moreover, due to the lack of long-term deep-sea benthic biological survey techniques in eastern and southern Taiwan, there has been a scarcity of data on deep-sea organisms. Since 2000, Chen Tian-ren has collaborated with French research units to successfully establish Taiwan’s independent capability to collect large benthic organisms in the deep sea, with collections now reaching depths of up to 5,622 meters, pioneering a new field of deep-sea biological research in Taiwan.
Chen Tian-ren’s research extends beyond Taiwan to populations in the western Pacific and the Indian-West Pacific regions. He was invited to write the shrimp section of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) West Pacific Fisheries Biology Guide and assisted in reviewing the shrimp section of fishing biology guides for Pakistan and Myanmar. Furthermore, he was invited to participate in the assessment of endangered lobster species worldwide by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List Assessment Group and served as the classification editor for marine lobster species in the most authoritative marine biodiversity database, WoRMS and its subsidiary, the global crustacean diversity database DecaNet.
On the other hand, Chen Tian-ren has long collaborated with the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at the National University of Singapore and the Marine Research Center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on the classification and evolutionary research of crustaceans. Recent publications in the field have special mentions of Chen Tian-ren and his team for their contribution to the revision of the classification system of crustaceans. He has also actively participated in the international marine biodiversity collection survey organized by the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, coordinating research and exhibition promotion of shrimp species, and was appointed as a research visiting fellow “Correspondant du Muséum” at the museum.
Chen Tian-ren’s contributions have positioned Taiwan as a leading authority in shrimp classification and diversity research in the highly biodiverse Indian-West Pacific region and continue to expand his research globally.