Sagami Bay and Suruga Bay harbor a rich marine biodiversity; however, their outer-shelf scleractinian coral fauna has not been characterized to date. Scleractinian corals were collected by dredge sampling of the Japanese Association for Marine Biology (JAMBIO) Coastal Organisms Joint Surveys in 2015 to elucidate the diversity of azooxanthellate scleractinian corals from the outer shelf zones of Sagami Bay and Suruga Bay. In this study, a total of 1291 azooxanthellate scleractinian specimens were collected, corresponding to 23 genera and 18 species, five of which are new records for Sagami Bay and eight are new records for Suruga Bay. Moreover, in all localities, except sampling locality (SL) 8, more than 70% of the specimens showed asexual reproduction. This finding suggests that asexual reproduction may play an important role in increasing the coral population size in soft-substrate environments of the outer shelf.
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6 October 2021
New Records of Azooxanthellate Scleractinian Corals (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) from Sagami Bay and Suruga Bay, Japan
Asuka Sentoku,
Yuki Tokuda
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Zoological Science
Vol. 39 • No. 1
February 2022
Vol. 39 • No. 1
February 2022
asexual reproduction
JAMBIO Coastal Organism Joint Surveys
Scleractinia
solitary coral
transverse division