An integrated morphological–molecular approach reveals new insights on the systematics of the octocoral

Abstract

Telestula humilis (Thomson, 1927) is a rare deep-sea stoloniferan octocoral distributed in the eastern Atlantic. Here we compared seven putative colonies of this species collected off Spain with the lectotype from the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco and found them to be identical morphologically. Phylogenetic analyses on both full mitogenomes and a concatenated alignment containing two mtDNA genes (mtMutS and Cox1) and nuclear 28S rRNA gene recovered Telestula humilis sister to Incrustatus and Inconstantia rather than to other species of Telestula. This therefore supports its taxonomic reassignment to Pseudotelestula gen. nov. as Pseudotelestula humilis comb. nov. The taxonomic reassignment is also supported by subtle differences observed between the morphology of the colony and the sclerome of Pseudotelestula humilis comb. nov. and the two sister genera. The occurrence of an intrusion tissue with sclerites in the basal part of the gastric cavity of the adult polyps is shared among Telestula and Pseudotelestula gen. nov. However, Pseudotelestula gen. nov. has sclerites arranged in a collaret and points below the tentacles, the sclerites of the calyx wall and the stolon are plump warty spindles, and the intrusion tissue has long sticks and spindles with cone-like spines.

The Species Diversity of the Genus Echinogorgia in Xiamen Bay and Its New Record in China

“…Untiedt et al [55] mentioned that an integrated approach assessing morphological and molecular variation is needed to address classification issues. Information integration is often considered the key to alleviating octocoral taxonomic problems [60][61][62]. The integration of genetic and morphological data is often considered key to mitigating taxonomic issues in octocorals [60][61][62].…”

“…Information integration is often considered the key to alleviating octocoral taxonomic problems [60][61][62]. The integration of genetic and morphological data is often considered key to mitigating taxonomic issues in octocorals [60][61][62]. As early as 2001, the scholar Bayer mentioned that new technologies in molecular analysis will allow for the possibility of solving the concept of species and genus, especially in problems that change with long-distance changes in geographical and ecological conditions [63].…”

Avilés Canyon System: Increasing the benthic biodiversity knowledge

“…More recently, emphasis has been placed on the study of communities and habitats with the presence of cold-water corals and sponge aggregations, through the SponGES and INTEMARES projects. Many other papers have been published with a focus on marine invertebrates, including Porifera (Cristobo et al, 2009;Ríos et al, 2018;Taboada et al, 2020;Santín et al, 2021), Cnidaria (Altuna, 2012a(Altuna, , b, c, d, 2013aRíos, 2014a, b, 2021;Tu et al, 2015;Molodtsova et al, 2019;Poliseno et al, 2021), Mollusca (Ibarrola et al, 2011;Gofas et al, 2017;Arias et al, 2019), Annelida (Lourido et al, 2014), Echinodermata (García-Guillén et al, 2022a, b, this issue), Fernández-Rodríguez et al, 2017, Crustacea (Frutos et al, 2012, and Chordata (Sánchez, 1993;Sánchez et al, 2002Sánchez et al, , 2003Sánchez et al, , 2005Sánchez and Olaso, 2004;Sánchez and Serrano, 2003;Rodríguez-Cabello et al, 2013;Isbert et al, 2015) and also general information has been generated from this area (OCEANA, 2009(OCEANA, , 2011, which proves the increase of interest in the ACS by the scientific community. In addition, some previous studies have studied the distribution and abundance of macrobenthos or habitats in the Cantabrian Sea and included part of the study area (Olaso, 1990;Sánchez et al, 2012a, b, 2013, Sánchez et al, 2014aSerrano et al, 2006aSerrano et al, , 2006bSerrano et al, , 2011Serrano et al, , 2012...…”

Dead man’s fingers point towards new species: A taxonomic revision of Alcyonium aurantiacum with statistical discrimination methods and a survey of integrative taxonomy in Octocorallia

“…Integrative taxonomy has contributed substantially to the delineation of species boundaries and the identification of homoplasious traits in many coral taxa Benayahu et al 2018;Arrigoni et al 2020). This thesis also forms part of a growing body of studies employing this approach (e.g., Núñez-Flores et al 2020;Poliseno et al 2021;Chapter 4). As seen in Chapter 2, the application of the integrative approach to octocoral research continues to be hampered by difficulties relating to molecular results, primarily the relatively low variance of mitochondrial genes (Huang et al 2008;McFadden et al 2011).…”

“…Additionally, progress in many groups is hampered by a dearth of material suitable for DNA extraction. Notwithstanding these challenges, recent advances such as the use of ultraconserved elements (Erickson et al 2020) are encouraging, and the integration of genetic and morphological data is now often cited as key to alleviating the problematic state of octocoral taxonomy (Pérez et al 2016;Núñez-Flores et al 2020;Poliseno et al 2021).…”