New records of the genusCallogorgia(Anthozoa: Octocorallia) in the western Atlantic, including the description of a new species

Abstract

Based on material collected during oceanographic campaigns in the western Atlantic from 1958 to 2011, two species of primnoid octocorals belonging to the genus Callogorgia were identified: Callogorgia americana and Callogorgia arawak sp. nov. These species are described and illustrated herein and their geographic and bathymetric are given. This is the first record of the genus in the south-western Atlantic. Additionally, the elevation of C. americana americana and C. a. delta to species level is proposed, keeping Callogorgia gilberti, C. delta and C. americana as separate species.

Response of deep-water corals to oil and chemical dispersant exposure

“…Here, the effects of oil, dispersant and oil-dispersant mixtures were tested experimentally on three species of deep-sea coral living near the DWH oil spill site in the Gulf of Mexico, including Paramuricea type B3 (Doughty et al, 2014), Callogorgia delta (Bayer et al, 2014) and Leiopathes glaberrima (as re-described in Opresko and Baron-Szabo, 2001). P. biscaya was the most common of the corals impacted by the DWH oil spill (White et al, 2012;Fisher et al, 2014), and Paramuricea type B3 is the sister species to this coral (Doughty et al, 2014).…”

Testing the depth-differentiation hypothesis in a deepwater octocoral

“…If the bathyal region is a source of increased genetic differentiation in the deep sea, then it could be expected that genetic differentiation within C. delta exists on the upper continental slope and is greater over vertical rather than geographical distances. This study also provided the opportunity to examine the level of genetic differentiation between C. delta and C. americana; two species only recently elevated to species status [24]. Closely related octocorals can be difficult to identify visually, and inclusion of samples from several species in a population genetic dataset can lead to erroneous inferences of population connectivity [25].…”

Deep-Water Octocorals (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) from the Galápagos and Cocos Islands. Part 1: Suborder Calcaxonia

“…indicates that it has only six to eight abaxial body wall scales and a body wall sclerite formula of: 6–8:2:0:1. Keys to the five western Atlantic species were published by Cairns and Bayer (2002) and Bayer et al (2014). Altogether, there are currently 28 valid species in the genus (Cairns and Bayer 2009; Taylor and Rogers 2015).…”