Towards the development of European Zoological Collection Network: the case of deep-sea decapods and echinoderms in European (including Russian) collections <B>Towards the development of European Zoological Collection Network: the case of deep-sea decapods and echinoderms in European (including Russian) collections</B><P> </B><EM><B></B></EM><B>1M. T,rkay, 2V. A. Spiridonov, A. V. Gebruk, A. N. Mironov, H. Thiel and D. G. Zhadan<BR> 1</B> Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Senckenbergenlarge 25, D-60325 Frankfurt a. M., Germany<B><BR> 2</B> Zoological Museum of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Bolshaya Nikitskaya Str. 6, Moscow 103009, Russia<B></B><P> Deep sea biology involves challenging studies of the macrofauna systematics and diversity in such interesting habitats as hadal trenches, abyssal plains, hydrothermal spots, isolated deep basins (i.e. Red Sea, Sea of Japan) and seamount systems. Due to their expenses, deep sea studies may be only succesfully conducted on an international basis.<BR> There exists, however, already some information in still insufficiently explored museum and institute collections. In particular, one of the world's largest data sets i.e., Russian collections are still not completely available (now because of poor support for basic science in Russia). These collections which have resulted from nearly 50 years (1949-1996) of deep sea exploration by the Soviet Union and Russia are a real treasure for everybody studying the deep sea and we have to develop systems how to deal with this information and how to make it available to international science. <BR> Going step by step, we intend to propose a project for studying deep sea decapods and echinoderms on the basis of European (including Russian) collection resources. Decapoda and Echinodermata are very distant taxonomically but appear to have much in common in biogeography, diversity pattern, feeding ecology and the methods of collecting. Thus, the simultaneous studies of these two groups might be cross-fertilising. Students of echinoderms and decapods are faced with serious taxonomical problems but in contrast to some other groups we may see a closer perspective of transforming taxonomical knowledge and faunistics to biogeography diversity pattern and retrievable information bases.<P>