Description
Three new species of Astreopora (Hexacorallia: Scleractinia: Acroporidae), from Cenderawasih Bay in West Papua, exhibit morphological innovations for this conservative genus, extant since the Cretaceous. Two species are fully branching, a condition never previously described for Astreopora: Astreopora cenderawasih sp. nov. has dendritic branching, also seen in the confamilial genus Montipora, whereas branches of A. acroporina sp. nov. possess an axial corallite, regarded as the key morphological innovation facilitating rapid diversification and dominance of reefs in the younger, confamilial and most diverse genus Acropora (staghorn corals). We propose that these novel characters may be parallelisms indicating deep familial homologies. The third species, Astreopora montiporina sp. nov., has expansive coenosteum, reminiscent of plating Montipora. The new species form part of the most species rich Astreopora assemblage reported to date, comprising 14 species. The unique tectonic and eustatic history of Cenderawasih Bay may have played a role in the evolution of these new species.
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 12 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
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How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Wallace C C, Turak E, DeVantier L (2024). Three new species of Astreopora (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) from West Papua. Version 1.0. Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node. Occurrence dataset. https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=papua_astreopora&v=1.0
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 not been registered with GBIF
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Originator
- Originator
Geographic Coverage
Cenderawasih Bay in West Papua, Indonesia
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-3.098, 134.563], North East [-1.732, 135.983] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Astreopora (Scleractinia: Acroporidae)
| Species | Astreopora cenderawasih, Astreopora acroporina, Astreopora monteporina |
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Sampling Methods
In February 2006, a survey of coral species diversity (herein meaning richness per se, rather than a diversity index) was conducted at 33 sites, each comprising deep (10–40 m) and shallow (<10 m) components in this bay.
| Study Extent | Cenderawasih Bay, Papua, Indonesia |
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Method step description:
- Species present in each site were assessed by two 45-minute surveys conducted using SCUBA (cf DeVantier et al. 1998). All easily recognizable species of Astreopora were recorded. Unknown species and colonies that were difficult to identify in situ were photographed, and representative specimens were collected for microscopic examination at the Museum of Tropical Queensland (MTQ). Identifications made in the field were reassessed using binocular microscopy and reference to type and mentioned specimens of all Astreopora species in MTQ and some on loan, as well as descriptions in Lamberts (1980, 1982), Veron and Wallace (1984) and Veron (2000). For comparison of colony shapes with modern material, fossil types from Vaughan (1919) were examined and photographed in the United States Natural History Museum (NHNM) Washington DC in 2008 and 2009.
Bibliographic Citations
- Carden C. Wallace, Emre Turak & Lyndon DeVantier (2011) Novel characters in a conservative coral genus: three new species of Astreopora (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) from West Papua, Journal of Natural History, 45:31-32, 1905-1924 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2011.573098
Additional Metadata
marine, harvested by iOBIS
| Alternative Identifiers | https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=papua_astreopora |
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