Just announced in the journal Zootaxa, a new species of coral in the waters of French Polynesia has been described and named by scientists from the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University.
Pocillopora tuahiniensis was described by Postdoctoral researcher Erika Johnston and Scott Burgess, associate professor of Biological Science, after they studied the coral’s genome and examined the symbiotic algae that live inside its cells. They also investigated where these coral live and how they’re different from other specimens in the area. This helped them conclude that this coral represents a previously undescribed species.
Telling one type of Pocillopora coral from another is tough, Johnston said, because they all look similar. Corals from the same species can look different, and corals from different species can look alike. These are called “cryptic species.”
“We know from experience that if you try to identify Pocillopora corals as distinct species while underwater, most of the time the identification will be wrong,” Burgess said. “It is why most research in the past simply lumps all of these corals into a single group, but they are actually all different.”
In the past, scientists used to look at the shape of corals to determine their species. But now, with advancements in genomics, they can identify evolutionarily distinct species that are “hidden” by morphological similarity.
The scientists gave this new coral the species name “tuahiniensis” because tuahine means “sister” in the Tahitian language. The name honours the people who have lived on these islands for several thousand years.
[main image: Erika Johnston, pictured, and Scott Burgess named this new coral Pocillopora tuahiniensis because tuahine means “sister” in the Tahitian language, and to recognise the people who have lived in French Polynesia a few thousand years. Credit: Scott Burgess]
More information: Erika C. Johnston et al, Pocillopora tuahiniensis: a new species of scleractinian coral (Scleractinia, Pocilloporidae) from French Polynesia, Zootaxa (2023). DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5369.1.5
Journal information: Zootaxa
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