The Azooxanthellate Scleractinia (Coelenterata: Anthozoa) of Australia

Occurrence
Latest version published by Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node on Feb 22, 2019 Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node

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Description

A total of 237 species of azooxanthellate Scleractinia are reported for the Australian region, including seamounts off the eastern coast. This study was based on approximately 5500 previously unreported specimens collected from 500 localities, as well as a re-examination of most of the types and previously reported specimens from the Australian region. Compared to all azooxanthellate species, those from Australia have a slightly higher percentage of species that are solitary and unattached (or transversely dividing), due to a disproportionate number of species in the families Flabellidae and Turbinoliidae. Bathymetrically they are typical of the worldwide fauna. Sixty-seven species are endemic to the Australian region. Azooxanthellate corals comprise half of the species and genera of the order Scleractinia (Cairns, 1999b), and, with the publication of this paper, consist of 703 species. Two hundred thirty-seven species, or one-third, of the azooxanthellate species occur off Australia, making it one of the richest regions in the world for this type of coral. The purpose of this paper was not to re-describe the azooxanthellate coral fauna of Australia, as most of the species have been adequately described and figured within the last 15 years in papers about the Australian fauna or adjacent regions (Cairns, 1989a, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999a; Cairns & Parker, 1992; Cairns & Zibrowius, 1997). Instead, the primary purpose is to document and verify all previously published records of the 237 Australian azooxanthellate species in the form of annotated synonymies, to augment these reports with additional records from the various Australian museums, and to list deposition of types and type localities for all species. This exhaustive compilation then provides the basis for a meaningful zoogeographic analysis of this fauna, the second goal of the paper.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 931 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Cairns, S.D. (2004). Data from: The Azooxanthellate Scleractinia (Coelenterata: Anthozoa) of Australia. Southwestern OBIS, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand, 892 records, Online http://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource.do?r=cairns2004corals released on May 6, 2015.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 245a00a2-064d-4d80-a380-96cce65c69e3.  Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Occurrence; Specimen

Contacts

Kevin Mackay
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
Marine Database Manager
NIWA
Private Bag 14-901
6241 Wellington
NZ
Stephen Cairns
  • Point Of Contact
Principal Investigator
National Museum of Natural History
NHB-163, W-329
Washington DC
US

Geographic Coverage

Australian waters

Bounding Coordinates South West [-48.217, 113.38], North East [-5.793, 163.054]

Taxonomic Coverage

Azooxanthellate Scleractinia (Coelenterata: Anthozoa)

Order Scleractinia

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1865-01-01 / 2002-12-31

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Cairns, S.D., 2004. The Azooxanthellate Scleractinia (Coelenterata: Anthozoa) of Australia. Records of the Australian Museum 56(3): 259-329

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS

Alternative Identifiers 245a00a2-064d-4d80-a380-96cce65c69e3
https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=cairns2004corals