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Morphology and phylogeny of Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov. and C. varians sp. nov., two golden corals from the Caroline seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean

  • Seamount Megabenthos Taxonomy and Phylogeny
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Abstract

Two new species of Chrysogorgia Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864 collected from the Caroline seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean are described. Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov. belongs to Versluys’ group C (Squamosae typicae) with only scales in polyp body wall and tentacles. C. pinniformis sp. nov. is characterized by large branches pinnately branched and forming multiple fans with its small branches regularly and quasi-dichotomous branched, and scales and rods present in the polyp mouth area. It is most similar to C. pinnata Cairns, 2007 by the pinnate trait, but differs from the latter by its group C pattern (vs. group A, Spiculosae) and having sclerites present in the polyp mouth area (vs. absent). Chrysogorgia varians sp. nov. belongs to the Chrysogorgia group A (Spiculosae) with rods distributed in the polyp body wall and tentacles. It is characterized by warty rods and elongated scales in the tentacles, many warts and ridges on the scales, conspicuously toothed margins at the rounded ends in the pinnules, and small rods with ridge-like warts in the polyp mouth area. This species was frequent and abundant in the Caroline seamounts during our cruises and its morphological variability in growth period was obvious. The phylogenetic analyses based on mtMutS and 28S rDNA regions supported the assignment of the new species to the genus Chrysogorgia. However, the mtMutS marker showed very limited usefulness for species delimitation and inner relationship inference of Chrysogorgia. In contrast, the 28S rDNA showed much higher level of genetic variation, and it may be a potential barcode for this genus. In the 28S rDNA trees, the two new species clustered together. Additionally, compilation of our data showed that 42 of 78 (ca. 54%) Chrysogorgia species were found in the Indo-West Pacific convergent region, indicating that this area may be a hotspot of deep-water Chrysogorgia species.

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Data Availability Statement

The specimens described in this study are available at the Marine Biological Museum of Chinese Academy of Sciences (MBMCAS) at Institute of Oceanology, Qingdao, China. Voucher IDs: Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov.: MBM286504; Chrysogorgia varians sp. nov.: MBM286438, MBM286439, MBM286440, MBM286441, MBM286502, MBM286503, MBM286505, MBM286506, MBM286507. The mtMutS sequences that support the findings of this study have been deposited in NCBI GenBank with the accession codes MW085090 (Chrysogorgia pinniformis), MW085091, MW418365, MW418366, MW418367, MW418368, MW418369, MW418370, MW418371, MW418364 (Chrysogorgia varians sp. nov.) and MW418361, MW418362, MW418363 (Chrysogorgia carolinensis Xu, Zhan & Xu, 2020). The 28S rDNA sequences that support the findings of this study have been deposited in NCBI GenBank with the accession codes MW418372 (C. pinniformis sp. nov.), MW418381, MW418377, MW418379, MW418378, MW418380, MW418383, MW418385, MW418382, MW418384 (C. varians sp. nov.) and MW418373, MW418374, MW418375, MW418376 (C. carolinensis).

The new species registration of Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov. and Chrysogorgia varians sp. nov. in Zoobank with LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank. org:act:74FE8B57-1038-49CC-83E2-CF05BB27C544 and urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:96111211-8D7B-40EFBFF4-1A2D78DE5247, respectively. The publication LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5C0EA878-ACF4-453A-9918-F4872AFA73E1.

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Acknowledgment

We thank assistance of the crew of R/V Kexue (Science in Chinese) and ROV Faxian (Discovery in Chinese) for sample collection. Special thanks go to Mr. Shaoqing WANG for taking the photos onboard.

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Author notes

  1. Yu XU and Zifeng ZHAN contributed equally to this work and should be regarded as co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Marine Organism Taxonomy and Phylogeny, Shandong Province Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Yu Xu, Zifeng Zhan & Kuidong Xu

  2. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519082, China

    Zifeng Zhan & Kuidong Xu

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yu Xu & Kuidong Xu

Authors
  1. Yu Xu
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  2. Zifeng Zhan
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  3. Kuidong Xu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kuidong Xu.

Additional information

Supported by the Science & Technology Basic Resources Investigation Program of China (No. 2017FY100804), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41930533), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB42000000), and the Senior User Project of R/V Kexue (No. KEXUE2019GZ04)

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Xu, Y., Zhan, Z. & Xu, K. Morphology and phylogeny of Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov. and C. varians sp. nov., two golden corals from the Caroline seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean. J. Ocean. Limnol. 39, 1767–1789 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-021-0386-5

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