A new species of Bathypathes (Cnidaria, Anthozoa, Antipatharia, Schizopathidae) from the Red Sea and its phylogenetic position

Abstract

A black coral, Bathypathes thermophila Chimienti, sp. nov. is described from the Saudi Arabian coasts of the Gulf of Aqaba and north Red Sea (Neom area) using an integrated taxonomic approach. The morphological distinctiveness of the new species is confirmed by molecular analyses. The species thrives in warm and high salinity waters typical of the Red Sea at bathyal depths. It can form colony aggregations on muddy bottoms with scattered, small hard substrates. Colonies are monopodial, feather-like, and attached to a hard substrate through a thorny basal plate. Pinnules are simple, arranged biserially and alternately, and all the same length (up to approximately 20 cm) except for few, proximal ones. Spines are triangular, laterally compressed, subequal, smooth, and simple or rarely bifurcated. Polyps are elongated transversely, 1.5–2.0 mm in transverse diameter. Large colonies can have one or few branches, whose origin is discussed. The phylogenetic position of B. thermophila sp. nov. within the order Antipatharia, recovered using three mitochondrial markers, shows that it is nested within the family Schizopathidae. It is close to species in the genera Parantipathes, Lillipathes, Alternatipathes, and Umbellapathes rather than to the other available representatives of the genus Bathypathes, as currently defined based on morphology. In agreement with previous findings, our results question the evolutionary significance of morphological characters traditionally used to discriminate Antipatharia at higher taxonomic level.

Molecular diversity of black corals from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea: a first assessment

“…Family SCHIZOPATHIDAE Brook, 1889 The four representatives of the family Schizopathidae detected in this study belong to the genus Bathypathes and correspond to those examined by Chimienti et al (2022).…”

“…The family Schizopathidae included eight molecular clades, among which clade XI comprised Red Sea sequences (PP BI = 0.99, BT ML = 99) recently identified as Bathypathes (Chimienti et al 2022) (Fig. 2).…”

“…We referred to Brook (1889), Opresko and Cairns (1994), Opresko (2001), Bo et al (2009) and Wagner (2015aWagner ( , 2015b for the family Antipathidae. The taxonomic revisions of Opresko (2001Opresko ( , 2004 were respectively referenced for the families Aphanipathidae and Myriopathidae and for Schizopathidae we referred to Brook (1889), Opresko (2002), Molodtsova and Opresko (2017) and Chimienti et al (2022).…”

“…Several studies in the past 15 years have relied on an integrated morpho-molecular approach to clarify the phylogenetic relationships of the order Antipatharia using a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear genes, including 5.8S, 18S, 28S, ITS1, ITS2, cox3-IGR-cox1, nad5-IGR-nad1 (IgrN) and trnW-IGR-nad2 (IgrW), (Lapian et al 2007;Wagner et al 2010;Bo et al 2012;Brugler et al 2013;Macisaac et al 2013;Bo et al 2018;Opresko et al 2020;Chimienti et al 2022). Most of the studies focused on inferring relationships among and within the families Antipathidae, Aphanipathidae and Myriopathidae (Lapian et al 2007;Lapian 2009;Wagner et al 2010), whereas Macisaac et al (2013), Lü et al (2021) and Chimienti et al (2022) investigated the relationships within the family Schizopathidae. The advent of high throughput sequencing technology allowed Barrett et al (2020) to reconstruct family-level relationships within the order on the basis of mitochondrial genomes.…”

From the shallow to the mesophotic: a characterization of Symbiodiniaceae diversity in the Red Sea NEOM region

“…Elsewhere in the world, mesophotic and deep-water corals occur at temperatures between 12°C and 4°C (Roberts et al, 2006). The Red Sea water temperature, however, stabilizes at 21°C-22°C even below 2,000 m depth (Sofianos and Johns, 2007;Roder et al, 2013); notwithstanding, it is inhabited by peculiar deep-sea coral species (e.g., Qurban et al, 2014;Chimienti et al, 2022). In the Red Sea, high water transparency due to its oligotrophic conditions increases the lower depth limit of the photic zone allowing the survival of photoautotrophic organisms deeper in the water column when compared with other localities (Kahng et al, 2014;Kheireddine et al, 2018).…”