广东雷州珍稀海洋生物国家级自然保护区伞形疣柳珊瑚Verru-cella umbracula(Ellis&Solander,1786)新纪录种OA

In order to clarify the taxonomic status of two samples of Verrucella collected by scuba diving in the survey of coral reefs in Guangdong Leizhou Rare Marine Organisms National Nature Reserve in 2024,and to verify whether they are reliable records of Verrucella umbracula(Ellis&Solander,1786)in Chinese sea are-as,the population structure,branching pattern,arrangement characteristics and surface and tissue bone nee-dles of corals were observed by systematic morphology and identified by optical microscope.Combined with the comparative analysis of the existing classification literature,the phylogenetic study of Ellisellidae based on mtMutS gene was performed.The results showed that the samples had a typical fan-shaped reticular group structure.The corals were small and contractible.The common meat tissue contained a large number of sym-metrical double-headed bone needles.The bone needles in the corals were mainly spindle-shaped,and the shape,size and color of the bone needles were highly consistent with the historical description.The phyloge-netic results also clearly support that it belonged to V.umbracula(Ellis&Solander,1786),and the molecu-lar evidence was consistent with the morphological identification results.This study confirms that V.umbrac-ula(Ellis&Solander,1786)are distributed in the Leizhou Peninsula and Chinese sea areas,which enriches the composition of Octocorallia in China.At the same time,it shows that the diversity of Gorgonacea groups in the sea area of Leizhou Peninsula still needs to be further revealed,which is of great significance for the taxonomy and faunistic studies of Octocorallia in China,as well as for the assessment of coastal biodiversity.