Molecular diversity of black corals from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea: a first assessment

Silvia Vicario; Tullia Isotta Terraneo; Giovanni Chimienti; Davide Maggioni; Fabio Marchese; Sam J. Purkis; Ameer Abdulla Eweida; Mattie Rodrigue; Francesca Benzoni

doi:10.1071/IS23041

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Molecular diversity of black corals from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea: a first assessment

Silvia Vicario

^A ^B ^* , Tullia Isotta Terraneo ^B , Giovanni Chimienti ^B ^C , Davide Maggioni

^D ^E , Fabio Marchese ^B , Sam J. Purkis ^F ^G , Ameer Abdulla Eweida ^H , Mattie Rodrigue ^I and Francesca Benzoni ^A ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Marine Science Program, Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.

^B Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering, Red Sea Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, 23955, Saudi Arabia.

^C Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare (CoNISMa), Rome, Italy.

^D Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences, University of Milano—Bicocca, Milan, Italy.

^E Marine Research and Higher Education (MaRHE) Center, University of Milano—Bicocca, Faafu Magoodhoo, Maldives.

^F Department of Marine Geosciences, Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33149, USA.

^G Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Annapolis, USA.

^H Saudi Red Sea Authority, Saudi Arabia.

^I OceanX, NY, USA.

^* Correspondence to: silvia.vicario@kaust.edu.sa

Handling Editor: Allen Collins

Invertebrate Systematics 38, IS23041 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS23041

Submitted: 31 July 2023 Accepted: 12 March 2024 Published: 9 April 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Black corals occur as part of benthic assemblages from shallow to deep waters in all oceans. Despite the importance in many benthic ecosystems, where these act as biodiversity aggregators, antipatharians remain poorly studied, with 75% of the known species occurring below recreational SCUBA diving depth limits. Currently, information regarding the diversity and evolutionary history is limited, with most studies focusing on Hawaii and the South Pacific Ocean. Other regions of the world have received less attention, such as the Red Sea, where only two black coral families and four genera have been recorded. We provide the first analysis of the molecular diversity of black corals in the eastern Gulf of Aqaba and the northern and central Saudi Arabian Red Sea, based on a dataset of 161 antipatharian colonies collected down to 627 m deep. Based on specimen morphology, we ascribed our material to 11 genera belonging to 4 of the 7 known Antipatharia families, i.e. Antipathidae, Aphanipathidae, Myriopathidae and Schizopathidae. The genus level phylogeny of three intergenic mitochondrial regions, the trnW-IGR-nad2 (IgrW), nad5-IGR-nad1 (IgrN) and cox3-IGR-cox1 was reconstructed including previously published material. Overall, we recovered six molecular clades that included exclusively Red Sea sequences, with the highest diversity occurring at mesophotic depths. This study highlights that diversity of black corals in the Red Sea is much higher than previously known, with seven new generic records, suggesting that this basin may be a hotspot for antipatharian diversity as is known for other taxa. Our results recovered unresolved relationships within the order at the familial and generic levels. This emphasises the urgent need for an integration of genomic-wide data with a re-examination of informative morphological features necessary to revise the systematics of the order at all taxonomic levels.

Keywords: Antipatharia, cox3-cox1, deep sea, IgrN, IgrW, mesophotic, phylogeny, Saudi Arabia.

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