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Vol. 43 No. 3, 2004
Soft Corals (Octocorallia: Alcyonacea) from Southern Taiwan.
II. Species Diversity and Distributional Patterns
Yehuda
Benayahu1,*, Ming-Shiou Jeng2, Shimrit
Perkol-Finkel1 and Chang-Feng Dai3
1Department
of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv
University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
2Institute of Zoology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
115
3Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan
University, Taipei, P.O. Box 23-13, Taiwan 106
Yehuda
Benayahu, Ming-Shiou Jeng, Shimrit Perkol-Finkel and Chang-Feng Dai
(2004) The
geographic setting of Taiwan, between the West Pacific Ocean and East
China Sea and at the crossroads of the Philippine-Japan I. Arc, has
produced reefs of special biogeographical interest. It has been
suggested that Taiwan may have served as a “stepping-stone” for the
dispersal of shallow reef organisms. Soft corals from Nanwan Bay and
Green I. (Lutao in Chinese),
southern Taiwan, were studied during 1994 and 1998. Scuba collections
were carried out to a depth of 33 m. Approximately 230 samples were
collected, encompassing a variety of species found on these reefs.
Visual estimates were made of the underwater abundance of species. The
collection yielded 69 species of the families Helioporidae,
Clavulariidae, Tubiporidae, Alcyoniidae, Nephtheidae, Xeniidae, and
Briareidae. These included 1 new species and 43 new zoogeographical
records for Taiwan. Among the 22 listed genera, the survey recorded 7
for the 1st time in Taiwanese reefs. The findings confirm the high
soft-coral diversity of these reefs. The shallow reefs of Nanwan Bay
are densely inhabited by species of the family Alcyoniidae. In
contrast, the deep reefs are characterized only by sporadic colonies of
Alcyoniidae, but abundant assemblages of azooxanthellate members of the
families Nephtheidae and Nidaliidae. Soft corals of the family Xeniidae
are abundant on the reefs of Green I. at a depth range of 3~10 m.
Interestingly, species of the family Xeniidae were rarely observed at
Nanwan Bay. The coral reefs of Taiwan and Japan are closely linked by
the northward-flowing Kuroshio Current, which brings water and larvae
from the reefs of the South China Sea. Therefore, we compared the
generic affiliation and abundance estimates of the Alcyoniidae between
southern Taiwan and the Ryukyu Archipelago (Japan), and found a close
resemblance between these 2 reef areas.
Key words: Octocorallia,
Taiwan, Coral reefs, Species diversity, Biogeography
*Correspondence: Tel: 972-3-6409090. Fax: 972-3-6409403.
E-mail: yehudab@tauex.tau.ac.il
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