Anthozoa from the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone

Abstract

An annotated list of deep-sea Anthozoa of the orders Actiniaria, Antipatharia, Scleractinia, Alcyonacea and Pennatulacea collected on the G.O. Sars MAR-ECO cruise to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between the Azores and the southern tip of the Reykjanes Ridge is given. A total of 33 species is reported of which 32 were identified to species or genus level. The groups most rich in species were Actiniaria (nine species), Scleractinia (eight species) and Pennatulacea (eight species). Scleractinia, Antipatharia and Pennatulacea were mainly represented by species with a wide or cosmopolitan geographical distribution. In contrast, most of the actiniarians had been rarely recorded in the North Atlantic. Three species, Schizopathes affinis Brook, 1889 (Antipatharia), Dendrobrachia multispina Opresko & Bayer, 1991 and Heteropolypus cf. insolitus Tixier-Durivault, 1964 (Alcyonacea) are reported from the North Atlantic for the first time.

Keywords:

• Anthozoa
• distribution
• Mid-Atlantic Ridge
• North Atlantic

Published in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Published in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the crew of RV G.O. Sars and research team of the MAR-ECO cruise for material collected and also to L. Watling, A. Gebruk and A. Mironov for their fruitful comments on the manuscript. The first author would like to thank E. Willassen and J.A. Kongsrud for their hospitality and help during the visit to the Bergen Museum. Financial support for the work was provided in part by RFBR research grant no. 06-04-48764a. The work was an element of MAR-ECO, a field project under the Census of Marine Life programme.

Notes

Published in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, Denmark