Science continues to add new genera and species, this time by the researchers of the Marine Zoology Group of the University of Vigo belonging to the Ocean-ECIMAT Strategic Group. The team led by professor and researcher Fran Ramil has just described a genus and three species of hydrozoans found in the western Pacific, in the waters of New Caledonia, collected during eight French oceanographic campaigns developed between 1985 and 1998. The description of the genus Schizoplumularia and the species S. vervoorti, S. geniculata and S. elegans is the result of the work that Ramil began to develop in 2000 in collaboration with Professor Wim Vervoort of the Natural History Museum of Leiden, the Netherlands, one of the most prestigious experts in hydrozoan taxonomy, who died in 2010, with the aim of studying the material from French research campaigns in the western Pacific, the marine region that hosts the greatest diversity of species of all the oceans in the world.
“The confirmation that we had a new genus was not complicated because the structure and branching pattern presented by the colonies we were studying was something new that had not yet been described within the Plumulariidae family. What was more complicated and required a longer period of work was determining whether the three species were new or whether two of them had already been described,” explains Ramil, who clarifies that it was necessary to study the type material of Plumularia insignis and also colonies of Plumularia tenuissima, which was possible thanks to the collaboration of the Natural History Museum of Paris and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center of Leiden, which sent them samples to finish the work and conclude that they were different species within the genus Schizoplumularia.
But beyond the descriptions made, the review of the type material of Plumularia insignis brought surprises and allowed them to achieve very interesting results about the status of this species. “According to the concept that was held until now of Plumularia insignis, this species included as synonyms Plumularia abietina and Plumularia flabellum and two varieties Plumularia insignis gracilis and Plumularia insginis conjuncta, but the study of the type material of the three species and the two varieties allowed us to ‘resurrect’ Plumularia flabellum as a valid species and also the two varieties that we elevated to the category of valid species and different from P. insignis“, explains the researcher.
Detailed description of the genus and the three new species
The name Schizoplumularia is the result of a combination of the Greek term skhizein, which means ‘divided, separated’ and refers to the independent origin of the lateral branches of the colony, and the genus name Plumularia, with which it shows a clear affinity.
As for the species, Ramil explains that S. vervoorti, which is also “the type species of the genus Schizoplumularia, the one that defines the genus, we dedicate it to Professor Wim Vervoort, with whom we have maintained a close collaboration for many years”. For its part, the names of the other two species refer to morphological characters of the species, the geniculate bearing of the specimens in the first case, and the “elegance” of the colonies in the second.
Four genera and 35 new species described in recent years
The descriptions of the genus and the three new species, carried out by researchers from the University of Vigo, which have already been published in the scientific journal Zootaxa, in addition to being, according to Ramil, “an important contribution to the knowledge of this family in the western Pacific, seem to confirm that Hydrozoa, as in other groups already studied, show a high diversity in the New Caledonia region and adjacent seas and also a certain degree of endemism, since this genus and the three new species join another genus and seven other species that we described in previous works and that are currently only known from these waters”, explains Ramil. For the development of this work, the researcher highlights the importance of natural history museums and the conservation of faunal collections as true archives of biodiversity, since in the event of not having access to the collections “we could never reach the conclusions we reached and could only pose hypotheses about the identity of the species we were studying”.
In total, in recent years, the Marine Zoology Group has described around 35 new species, half of them since 2000, seven of them since 2014, to which are added four genera, two of them described in the last year. Descriptions that will continue, as Ramil confirms, “in fact we are preparing several manuscripts that include descriptions of several new species, which will be published over the next year”, assures the researcher from the University of Vigo.
Source: duvi
