New or notable records of brittle stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from South Africa

Abstract

Ophiuroid research in South Africa has not kept pace with global taxonomic research with the last major taxonomic review of the group being published in 1976. This paper documents all new records of Ophiuroidea from South Africa since (and including) 1977. These records originate from specimens housed in five zoological collections, from photographic records and from reports published in the non-taxonomic literature. A short review of the history of ophiuroid taxonomy in South Africa is also given and for each new record, key references, distribution, ecology, additional notes and, where possible, photographs, are presented. This has resulted in an additional 24 species being recorded within the mainland Exclusive Economic Zone of South Africa, elevating the total known number of ophiuroid species reported in the region to 137.

Order Euryalida (Echinodermata, Ophiuroidea), new species and new records from the South China Sea and the Northwest Pacific seamounts

“…22, figs 13–15; Baker 1980 : 22; McKnight 2000 : 21–22, fig. 6; Olbers et al 2015 : 85, fig. 1A, B; 2019: 51–52, fig.…”

“… Asteroschema salix was first described by Lyman (1879) , then redescribed by Lyman (1882) , Baker (1980) , McKnight (2000) , and Olbers et al (2015) . These redescriptions are useful to understand individual morphological character variation of A.…”

“…Most of the specimens were frozen at -80°C without preservation fluid, then transported to the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences ( CAS ), Sanya, China, for further analysis. The samples were sorted and identified by using literature ( Pallas 1788 ; Ljungman 1871; Lyman 1869 , 1872 , 1875 , 1878 , 1879 , 1882 , 1883 ; Lütken and Mortensen 1889 ; Alcock 1894 ; Verrill 1894 , 1899 ; Koehler 1904 , 1906 , 1907 , 1914 , 1930 ; Matsumoto 1911 , 1915 , 1917 ; H. L. Clark 1915 , 1916b , 1917 , 1939 , 1941 ; Mortensen 1924; A. H. Clark 1916a , 1949 ; Döderlein 1911 , 1927 , 1930 ; Murakami 1944 ; Baker 1980 ; Guile 1981 ; Peterson 1985 ; McKnight 2000 ; Liao 2004 ; Mah et al 2009 ; Pawson et al 2009 ; Parameswaran and Jaleel 2012 ; Smirnov et al 2014 ; Olbers et al 2015 ) and by molecular analysis.…”

Azooxanthellate Scleractinia (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) from South Africa

“…These findings are in keeping with the observations of Gibbons et al (1999) and Griffiths et al (2010) that South Africa has low taxonomic efforts despite its high biodiversity. Although regional expertise has recently expanded within invertebrate groups such as Echinodermata ( Olbers 2016 ; Filander and Griffiths 2017 ), Crustacea ( Biccard 2012 ; Landschoff 2011), and one other Cnidaria class, the Actiniaria ( Laird 2013 ), there is still a notable gap in taxonomy of several other cnidarian orders.…”

Range extension and first record of the deep-sea brittle star Ophiactis abyssicola (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) in Canadian waters

“…abyssicola , but representing a separate genetic clade (O'Hara et al ., 2014). In the Atlantic, O. abyssicola is reported from western Greenland (Smirnov et al ., 2014), Iceland and in other Scandinavian waters, around northern UK, western France, northern Spain, the Azores, Canaries, Cape Verde and the Gulf of Mexico (USA) (OBIS, 2021), as well as off South Africa (Mortensen, 1933; Olbers et al ., 2019) and Tristan da Cunha (Lyman, 1882). Ophiactis abyssicola is known to occur on fine sand, gravel, shells and rocks, and among sponges, corals and other sessile organisms (Farran, 1912; Stöhr & Segonzac, 2005).…”