Description of Turritopsoides marhei sp. nov. (Hydrozoa, Anthoathecata) from the Maldives and its phylogenetic position

ABSTRACT

Turritopsoides marhei, a new species of the hydrozoan family Oceaniidae, is described from the Maldives. This species can be distinguished from the only other member of the genus by the presence of more branched colonies, branches not being adnate to pedicels, longer pedicels, larger nematocysts, nematocyst-rich nematophore-like outgrowths from pedicels, smaller male gonophores, and a different geographic distribution. This finding represents the first record of the genus outside the type locality of its type species, in Belize. Molecular phylogenetic analyses show that, as expected, T. marhei belongs to the clade Filifera IV. However, the phylogenetic hypothesis based on both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences reveals that most of the families of this group are polyphyletic, including Oceaniidae, and suggests that the morphological characters used to discriminate among filiferan families need to be revised thoroughly.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:CE901E0D-B125-4A87-BB97-8020C0658B5D

RESPONSIBLE EDITOR:

• Tina Molodtsova

KEYWORDS:

• New species
• molecular phylogenetics
• Filifera
• Oceaniidae
• systematics

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the staff of the Marine Research and High Education (MaRHE) Center and the community of Magoodhoo for the logistic support. We especially thank Dale Calder for his valuable suggestions and Maureen Zubowski and Sebastian Kvist from The Royal Ontario Museum for the loan of type material of Turritopsoides brehmeri. Finally, we thank two reviewers, whose comments greatly improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Davide Maggioni http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0508-3987

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PADI Foundation, USA under Grant #14384.