Vol. 61, 2022

(update: 2022.9.12)

Three New Species of the Sun Coral Genus Tubastraea (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) from Hong Kong, China

Sam King Fung Yiu¹ and Jian-Wen Qiu^1,2,3,*

¹Department of Biology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. *Correspondence: E-mail: qiujw@hkbu.edu.hk (Qiu).
E-mail: 20482205@life.hkbu.edu.hk (Yiu)
²Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China
³HKBU Institute of Research and Continuing Education, Shenzhen, China

Received 9 February 2022 / Accepted 26 May 2022
Communicated by Benny K.K. Chan

Tubastraea is a genus of azooxanthellate scleractinian corals belonging to the family Dendrophylliidae, which are commonly called sun corals. This genus currently has only seven recognized species. In this paper, we report three new species of Tubastraea, including T. dendroida sp. nov., which has a tree-like colony, T. violacea sp. nov., which has violet polyps, and T. chloromura sp. nov., which has olive green polyps. These species are distinct in their septal structures, as well as their rDNA sequences including the entire ITS1, 5.8S and ITS2, and a segment of the 18S and 28S genes.

Key words: Scleractinian coral, Azooxanthellate, Ahermatypic coral, Dendrophylliid, South China Sea.

Citation: Yiu SKF, Qiu JW. 2022. Three new species of the sun coral genus Tubastraea (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) from Hong Kong. Zool Stud 61:45. doi:10.6620/ZS.2022.61-45.

Supplementary Materials: Fig. S1丨Fig. S2丨Fig. S3丨Table S1