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Zooxanthellate octocorals of the genus Cladiella Gray, 1869 are common on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, including in the Red Sea. Among the 61 species listed in WoRMS, 27 species were originally described from the Red Sea, mostly based on material collected in the 19th century. The latter includes the type species of the genus as well as the three other oldest known species of the genus. The goals of the present study were to locate the various natural history museum depositories of the 27 Red Sea types and to redescribe the types for the first time since their initial description. All type colonies were found and re-described using whole-colony photography and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to depict their sclerites. SEM images provide the dimensions and the detailed surface-microstructure of all sclerite types present across all type materials. These findings led us to a revised diagnosis of the genus and an updated description of all 27 types. The results present a comprehensive overview of all of the Red Sea Cladiella type colonies, constituting the first step towards a complete taxonomic revision of this speciose genus.
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Morphology and molecular phylogenetics of the rockpens
Previous research supports the idea that all sea pens anchor to soft sediment using a long, basal, peduncle. The discovery of several pennatulacean sea pen species (rockpens) with an adaptation to bind to rocky substrata alters this understanding. The evolutionary history of octocorals, including these sea pens, has long been poorly understood due to a slow rate of mitochondrial gene evolution and a consequent lack of phylogenetically informative molecular markers to distinguish species. The objective of this project is to analyze three species of rockpens (Calibelemnon francei, Anthoptilum gowlettholmesae, Anthoptilum sp. Alaska) and other octocorals to construct a phylogeny to better understand the evolutionary relationships between these taxa. Using preserved specimens from the California Academy of Sciences' Department of Invertebrate Zoology, the genes of ten octocoral species were analyzed. This project sequenced three protein-coding mitochondrial genes, ND2, ND6, and msh1, and phylogenetic tree construction and analysis were done using Geneious and R Studio. Additionally, SEM photographs of the sclerites were used to morphologically characterize the taxa. We hypothesize that all rockpens actually belong to the genus Anthoptilum and form a monophyletic clade with other species of the genus that do not inhabit rocky substrata. Future research will require investigating how other non-rock inhabiting species in the genus Anthoptilum are phylogenetically related to the rockpens.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2243994
- PAR ID:
- 10502217
- Publisher / Repository:
- Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science - 2023 NDiSTEM
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Portland, OR
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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