Diversity of Saint Helena Island and zoogeography of zoantharians in the Atlantic Ocean: Jigsaw falling into place

Zoantharia (Cnidaria: Hexacorallia) of the Dutch Caribbean and One New Species of Parazoanthus

“…Remarks: This is the most widespread zoantharian in shallow waters of the subtropical and tropical Atlantic Ocean [5], as well the most common zoantharian species across the Caribbean, as evidenced by the records listed above. Of interest is that many specimens from older surveys around Sint Eustatius and Curaçao in the 1920s to 1980s are from intertidal depths, while recent surveys in 2015 and 2017 from the same islands found very few colonies in such shallow waters.…”

“…Previously collected and identified specimens from earlier field work were also re-identified as much as possible by the first or last author (n = 173), although some of these earlier specimens (particularly type specimens) retain their original identification with no further amendment (n = 2). Such 'earlier' identifications, however, may be synonymous with other species [5,27,28], and have not been counted in species totals following the methodology in Santos et al [5], and are instead listed within species groups (as "b", "c", etc, see Table 1). Table 1.…”

“…Recent and other previous records: Ascension [9], Barbados, Belize [99], Brazil [1,, Canary Islands [142], Cape Verde [4,25,143,144], Colombia [145], Costa Rica [146,147], Cuba [74,148,149], Curaçao [24,150], Jamaica [77,148,[151][152][153], Mexico [94,154,155], Panama [78,135,[156][157][158], Puerto Rico [148], Sint Eustatius [22], Saint Helena [5], Saint Thomas [23,148], U.S. Virgin Islands [158], USA (Florida) [159][160][161], and Venezuela [70,162,163].…”

“…Detailed information about the diversity of the zoantharian fauna at species level has been reported from various parts of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas, although some records may not be complete or taxonomically not up to date anymore. For example, 13 species have been recorded from the coastline of Brazil [1], 11 from of the Gulf of Mexico [2], 10 from the Bahamas and Florida [3], 8 from the Cape Verde islands in the eastern Atlantic [4] and Saint Helena Island [5], 7 from Bermuda [6], 7 from the Mediterranean [7], 5 in Canary Islands [8], and 4 from Ascension Island in the central Atlantic [9]. In addition, five deep-water species from the Azores (eastern Atlantic) were described [10,11].…”

“…In addition, five deep-water species from the Azores (eastern Atlantic) were described [10,11]. While some recent progress has been made in assessing oceanic basin-wide diversity patterns [5], questions remain on the true numbers of species present in each region due to a general lack of field data and ambiguous or brief original species descriptions. Thus, detailed data with accurate species identifications, the basis of large-scale biodiversity analyses, are still needed from most regions of the Atlantic.…”