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Biologists from Hong Kong Baptist College have found three new species of coral within the metropolis’s waters.
The brand new marine species are laborious coral — that means they’ve laborious calcium carbonate skeletons — and haven’t been recognized wherever else on the planet.
The college mentioned in a press launch issued on Thursday that the brand new species had been found by Professor Qiu Jianwen and MPhil pupil Yiu King-fung from the college’s division of biology and their findings have already been accepted for publication within the tutorial journal Zoological Studies.
The group dubbed the three species Tubastraea dendroida, Tubastraea chloromura and Tubastraea violacea. All of them belong to the genus Tubastraea, extra generally often known as solar coral.
Much like most solar corals, Tubastraea dendroida has a brilliant orange coloration.
As a substitute of rising in clumps like most of their associated species, these new species have tree-like constructions, with the principle stem of its colony attenuating from the bottom to the tip. The group subsequently named it “dendroida” to replicate its tree-shaped physique.
Lined with a skinny layer of pale purple tissue on the corallites (skeletal cups), Tubastraea violacea stands out from different associated solar coral species as its polyp wall tissues and skeleton are violet. Its tentacles are yellow and the corallites have a thick wall.
Primarily based on comparisons with DNA sequences in public databases, the group discovered that this species might have coloration variants elsewhere, similar to a yellow coloration variant in New Caledonia within the South Pacific.
The ultimate species is the Tubastraea chloromura, which has a fragile olive inexperienced skeletal wall and a circle of yellow tentacles surrounding its mouth. Because of this, the species has been named “chloromura”, with “chloro” and “murus” that means “inexperienced” and “wall”, respectively.
From coral gene sequences recorded in public databases, the college’s biologists envisage the potential distribution of Tubastraea dendroida and Tubastraea violacea in Japan and the Western Pacific Ocean. Nonetheless, at this stage, Tubastraea chloromura is simply recognized to inhabit Hong Kong waters.
All of those three coral species are non-reef-building corals. They don’t host symbiotic algae that produce vitamins and vitality through photosynthesis.
Residing in deeper waters at depths of between 10 and 30 meters, they achieve vitality and vitamins by capturing zooplankton from seawater utilizing their tentacles.
“Our discovery of three new species of Tubastraea enhances our data of the variety of this solar coral genus. Provided that corals are one of many best-studied marine animals, our research reveals how little we find out about marine variety, and what number of undescribed species are nonetheless awaiting our discovery,” mentioned Qiu.
“The invention may be very encouraging because it gives robust proof of the excessive marine biodiversity in Hong Kong waters… It additionally evokes us to additional discover the variety of marine animals, research their features and ecosystem providers, and shield them from potential human disturbances.”
The samples had been collected when the group surveyed coral-eating nudibranchs, a shell-less marine mollusc, at Sung Kong and Waglan Island within the japanese waters of Hong Kong.
With the addition of three new members, the variety of recognized species within the Tubastraea genus has elevated from seven to 10.
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