Published November 5, 2025
| Version v1
Journal article
Open
Morphology and phylogeny of two new species of deep-sea mushroom soft corals (Octocorallia, Corallidae, Anthomastinae) from the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Authors/Creators
- 1. First Institute of Oceanography, MNR, Qingdao, China|Qingdao Marine Science and technology Center, Qingdao, China
- 2. Qingdao Marine Science and technology Center, Qingdao, China|First Institute of Oceanography, MNR, Qingdao, China
- 3. National Deep Sea Center, MNR, Qingdao, China
Description
Members of the subfamily Anthomastinae Verrill, 1922, commonly known as mushroom soft corals, are characterized by their capitate or mushroom-shaped red colonies and large autozooids. Deep-sea mushroom corals of this subfamily remain poorly documented in the South Atlantic. This study describes two new Anthomastinae species, Neoanthomastus longistylus sp. nov. and Anthomastus mirabilis sp. nov., from the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge at depths of 1,553–2,145 m. Neoanthomastus longistylus sp. nov. is characterized by a slender stalk, siphonozooids distributed on the capitulum and the upper third of the stalk, and tentacular sclerites that are predominantly straight rods and rods with one end curved. Anthomastus mirabilis sp. nov. is distinguished by the presence of dumbbells in its tentacles, clubs and dumbbells in the anthocodial wall, and the absence of spindles. The mitochondrial genome of N. longistylus sp. nov. contains 14 PCGs, 2 rRNAs, and 1 tRNA, while that of A. mirabilis sp. nov. comprises 17 PCGs, 2 rRNAs, and 1 tRNA, with three duplicated genes – ND3, ND6, and ND4L – that are identical in sequence. Phylogenetic analyses based on the partial mtMutS gene and 13 PCGs from the mitochondrial genomes (mtMutS not included) reveal the phylogenetic relationships within the subfamily Anthomastinae. These are the first records of both genera from the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, enriching the known species diversity and providing critical baseline data for future biodiversity assessments.
Files
ZSE_article_163559.pdf
Files
(9.0 MB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:a8a4dfa7d6539cd64b5f28defc0d7d41
|
9.0 MB | Preview Download |
System files
(138.8 kB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:98ec40967a155b7281c34b66d7964bbf
|
138.8 kB | Download |
Linked records
Additional details
References
- Bayer FM (1956) Descriptions and redescriptions of the Hawaiian octocorals collected by the US Fish Commission steamer" Albatross"(2. Gorgonacea: Scleraxonia). https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/879
- Bayer FM (1993) Two new species of the gorgonacean genus Paragorgia (Coelenterata: Octocorallia). http://hdl.handle.net/10088/2391
- Bayer FM, Grasshoff M, Verseveldt J (1983) Illustrated trilingual glossary of morphological and anatomical terms applied to Octocorallia. Brill Archive. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004631915
- Berntson EA, Bayer FM, McArthur AG, France SC (2001) Phylogenetic relationships within the Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) based on nuclear 18S rRNA sequences. Marine Biology 138: 235–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s002270000457
- Carvalho NF, Waters LG, Arantes RC, Couto DM, Cavalcanti GH, Güth AZ, Falcão APC, Nagata PD, Hercos CM, Sasaki DK, Dottori M, Cordes EE, Sumida PYG (2023) Underwater surveys reveal deep-sea corals in newly explored regions of the southwest Atlantic. Communications Earth & Environment 4: 282. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00924-0
- Chen I-P, Tang C-Y, Chiou C-Y, Hsu J-H, Wei NV, Wallace CC, Muir P, Wu H, Chen CA (2009) Comparative Analyses of Coding and Noncoding DNA Regions Indicate that Acropora (Anthozoa: Scleractina) Possesses a Similar Evolutionary Tempo of Nuclear vs. Mitochondrial Genomes as in Plants. Marine Biotechnology 11: 141–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-008-9129-2
- Debreuil J, Tambutté S, Zoccola D, Segonds N, Techer N, Marschal C, Allemand D, Kosuge S, Tambutté É (2011) Specific organic matrix characteristics in skeletons of Corallium species. Marine Biology 158: 2765–2774. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-011-1775-7
- Figueroa DF, Baco AR (2015) Octocoral mitochondrial genomes provide insights into the phylogenetic history of gene order rearrangements, order reversals, and cnidarian phylogenetics. Genome Biology and Evolution 7: 391–409. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evu286
- Herrera S, Baco A, Sánchez JA (2010) Molecular systematics of the bubblegum coral genera (Paragorgiidae, Octocorallia) and description of a new deep-sea species. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 55: 123–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2009.12.007
- Hu X, Zhang Q, Ge M, Li X, Wang Z, Zhang X, Xu Q (2025) Two new species of deep-sea Red Corals (Coralliidae, Genus Hemicorallium Gray, 1867) from the western Indian Ocean. Zoosystematics and Evolution 101: 317–339. https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.101.139350
- Jin J-J, Yu W-B, Yang J-B, Song Y, dePamphilis CW, Yi T-S, Li D-Z (2020) GetOrganelle: A fast and versatile toolkit for accurate de novo assembly of organelle genomes. Genome Biology 21: 241. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02154-5
- Kalyaanamoorthy S, Minh BQ, Wong TK, Von Haeseler A, Jermiin LS (2017) ModelFinder: Fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods 14: 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/%20nmeth.4285
- Katoh K, Standley DM (2013) MAFFT multiple sequence alignment software version 7: Improvements in performance and usability. Molecular Biology and Evolution 30: 772–780. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst010
- Leão ZMAN, Kikuchi RKP (2001) The Abrolhos Reefs of Brazil. In: Seeliger U, Kjerfve B (Eds) Coastal Marine Ecosystems of Latin America. Ecological Studies. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04482-7_7
- Li Y, Xu K (2023) Anthomastus nanhaiensis, new species, and Bathyalcyon robustum Versluys, 1906, two mushroom soft corals (Octocorallia: Coralliidae) from Zhenbei Seamount in the South China Sea. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 71: 669–680. https://doi.org/10.26107/RBZ-2023-0050
- Li Y, Li J, Xu K (2025) Mushroom Soft Corals (Octocorallia: Coralliidae) From Seamounts in the Tropical Northwestern Pacific: Morphology and Phylogenetic Analysis Reveal a New Genus and Six New Species. Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research 2025: 4177670. https://doi.org/10.1155/jzs/4177670
- McFadden CS, Sánchez JA, France SC (2010) Molecular Phylogenetic Insights into the Evolution of Octocorallia: A Review. Integrative and Comparative Biology 50: 389–410. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icq056
- McFadden CS, Van Ofwegen LP, Quattrini AM (2022) Revisionary systematics of Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) guided by phylogenomics. Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists 1. https://doi.org/10.18061/bssb.v1i3.8735
- Molodtsova TN (2013) Deep-sea mushroom soft corals (Octocorallia: Alcyonacea: Alcyoniidae) of the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Marine Biology Research 9: 488–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/17451000.2012.750427
- Nguyen L-T, Schmidt HA, Von Haeseler A, Minh BQ (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum-likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 32: 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
- Park E, Song J-I, Won Y-J (2011) The complete mitochondrial genome of Calicogorgia granulosa (Anthozoa: Octocorallia): potential gene novelty in unidentified ORFs formed by repeat expansion and segmental duplication. Gene 486: 81–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gene.2011.07.003
- Ronquist F, Teslenko M, Van Der Mark P, Ayres DL, Darling A, Höhna S, Larget B, Liu L, Suchard MA, Huelsenbeck JP (2012) MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology 61: 539–542. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029
- Rosales Ruiz A, Ocaña O, De La Herrán R, Navajas-Pérez R, Ruiz Rejón C, Congil Ross A, Robles F (2025) Going deep into Parazoanthus axinellae (Anthozoa: Zoantharia) complex: description of two species in the Alboran Sea based on an integrative approach. Marine Biodiversity 55: 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-024-01493-x
- Sánchez JA, Lasker HR, Taylor DJ (2003) Phylogenetic analyses among octocorals (Cnidaria): Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences (lsu-rRNA, 16S and ssu-rRNA, 18S) support two convergent clades of branching gorgonians. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 29: 31–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1055-7903(03)00090-3
- Thomson JS (1911) The Alcyonaria of the Cape of Good Hope and Natal. Alcyonacea. Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 47: 549–589. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080456800005032
- Verrill AE (1879) Notice of recent additions to the marine fauna of the eastern coast of North America. American Journal of Science 3: 309–315. https://doi.org/10.2475/ajs.s3-17.100.309
- Verseveldt J, Bayer FM (1988) Revision of the genera Bellonella, Eleutherobia, Nidalia and Nidaliopsis (Octocorallia: Alcyoniidae and Nidalliidae), with descriptions of two new genera. Zoölogische Verhandelingen 245: 1–131. https://repository.naturalis.nl/pub/317855
- Williams GC (2003) Capitate taxa of the soft coral genus Eleutherobia (Octocorallia: Alcyoniidae) from Palau and South Africa; a new species and a new combination. Zoölogische Verhandelingen 345: 419–436. https://repository.naturalis.nl/pub/220576
- Xiang C, Gao F, Jakovlić I, Lei H, Hu Y, Zhang H, Zou H, Wang G, Zhang D (2023) Using PhyloSuite for molecular phylogeny and tree‐based analyses. iMeta 2: e87. https://doi.org/10.1002/imt2.87
- Zhang D, Gao F, Jakovlić I, Zou H, Zhang J, Li WX, Wang GT (2020) PhyloSuite: An integrated and scalable desktop platform for streamlined molecular sequence data management and evolutionary phylogenetics studies. Molecular Ecology Resources 20: 348–355. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13096