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Tritonia iocasica sp. nov., a new tritoniid species from a seamount in the tropical western Pacific (Heterobranchia: Nudibranchia)

  • Seamount Megabenthos Taxonomy and Phylogeny
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Abstract

During an expedition to a seamount at Caroline Plate in the tropical western Pacific, a new species of Tritonia was sampled from the upper bathyal zone at depth of 970–1 262 m. This new species, Tritonia iocasica sp. nov., represents the first tritoniid nudibranch known to feed on octocoral of the family Melithaeidae. The species is up to 120 mm in length, pinkish in color; with the rhinophoral sheath divided into several petaliform extensions; veil with about 18 elongate digitiform processes; notal margin with 17–19 pairs of secondary gills; anus located below the 5th and 6th secondary gills, and the genitalia below the 3rd secondary gill on the right side of the body. Based on these external features, T. iocasica sp. nov. can be clearly distinguished from all previously described members of the genus. Phylogenetic analyses of two mitochondrial (COI, 16S rRNA) and a nuclear (H3) genes using Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood, and species delimitation analysis also support the separation of T. iocasica sp. nov. from its congeners.

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Data Availability Statement

The authors declare that all the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

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Acknowledgment

The data and samples were collected onboard R/V Kexue. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the crews for their assistance during the survey. We are very grateful to Prof. Kuidong XU and Dr. Xuwen WU for their efforts in collecting the specimens. Dr. Yang LI identified the coral and helped in conducting the SEM study of the coral sclerites. Four anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments and suggestions that greatly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Marine Organism Taxonomy and Phytogeny, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Shuqian Zhang & Suping Zhang

  2. Center for Ocean Mega Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Shuqian Zhang & Suping Zhang

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  1. Shuqian Zhang
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  2. Suping Zhang
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Correspondence to Shuqian Zhang or Suping Zhang.

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Supported by the Science & Technology Basic Resources Investigation Program of China (No. 2017FY100804), the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41930533), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB42000000), the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42090044), and the Senior User Project of R/V Kexue (No. Kexue2020G02)

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Zhang, S., Zhang, S. Tritonia iocasica sp. nov., a new tritoniid species from a seamount in the tropical western Pacific (Heterobranchia: Nudibranchia). J. Ocean. Limnol. 39, 1817–1829 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-021-0408-3

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