Andrea L. Crowther

South Australian Museum · Marine Invertebrates

The deep-water regions of eastern and central Great Australian Bight (GAB) are subject to hydrocarbon exploration; consequently, there are efforts to study their biodiversity. Australia has ~200 species of Calcarea, but none has been described taxonomically from the GAB, and most are known down to only 200 m depth. A characterization of deep benthi...

Digitisation has led to an under-publicised group of sponges gaining more visibility almost 90 years after being collected from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. These sponges are presented here with updated taxonomy.

Background Our knowledge of the benthic fauna at lower bathyal to abyssal (LBA, > 2000 m) depths off Eastern Australia was very limited with only a few samples having been collected from these habitats over the last 150 years. In May–June 2017, the IN2017_V03 expedition of the RV Investigator sampled LBA benthic communities along the lower slope an...

Background: The Great Australian Bight (GAB) comprises the majority of Australia’s southern coastline, but to date its deep water fauna has remained almost unknown. Recent issuing of oil and gas leases in the region has highlighted this lack of baseline biological data and established a pressing need to characterise benthic abyssal fauna. Methods:...

Actiniaria are exclusively soft-bodied hexacorallian cnidarians occurring in shallow and deep sea environments. Actiniaria from deep sea regions of Australia are relatively unknown; however, specimens were collected during surveys of the Great Australian Bight, undertaken primarily from RV Investigator, in 2015 and 2017. These surveys comprise the...

Calcareous sponges collected from a benthic survey in the Great Australian Bight

Some mysids (Crustacea: Mysida) live symbiotically with a variety of marine invertebrates, including cnidarians. One of these, the carpet anemone Stichodactyla haddoni (Cnidaria: Actiniaria), is known to host the mysid Idiomysis inermis, but quantitative survey data on this association are lacking. Therefore, we surveyed the spatial distribution pa...

We document for the first time five species of intertidal and shallow subtidal sea anemones (members of cnidarian order Actiniaria) from the Republic of Singapore. Bunodosoma goanense den Hartog & Vennam, 1993, Pelocoetes exul (Annandale, 1907), and Stephensonactis ornata Panikkar, 1936, were previously known only from India; they occur primarily o...

For the kingdom Animalia, 1,552,319 species have been described in 40 phyla in a new evolutionary classification. Among these, the phylum Arthropoda alone represents 1,242,040 species, or about 80% of the total. The most successful group, the Insecta (1,020,007 species), accounts for about 66% of all animals. The most successful insect order, Coleo...

Phyllodiscus semoni is a morphologically variable sea anemone species from the Indo-Pacific with morphotypes ranging from upright and branched to low-lying and rounded. The apparent camouflage strategies of this sea anemone allow it to resemble other species or objects in its environment, such as stony corals, soft corals, seaweeds, or rocky boulde...

We describe a new species of carcinoecium-forming sea anemone, Stylobates birtlesisp. n., from sites 590-964 m deep in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. An anemone of this genus settles on a gastropod shell inhabited by a hermit crab, then covers and extends the shell to produce a chitinous structure termed a carcinoecium. Styl...

Nineteen species of sea anemones sensu stricto (Anthozoa; Zoantharia; Actiniaria) are documented from the Moreton Bay region in eastern Australia, based primarily on specimens observed and collected during the Moreton Bay International Marine Biology Workshop in February 2005. Each species is taxonomically diagnosed, and information on the distribu...

This study investigated the spatial distribution patterns of three shrimp species, Periclimenes holthuisi, P. brevicarpalis, and Thor amboinensis on the sea anemone Stichodactyla haddoni in the laboratory. Anemones were partitioned into five zones (mouth, inner tentacle, outer tentacle, upper column, and lower column), and shrimp distribution on th...

A preliminary field survey was conducted to determine the distribution of ectosymbiotic shrimp Periclimenes holthuisi on the sea anemone Stichodactyla haddoni in Moreton Bay (Queensland, Australia). Laboratory experiments were also carried out to verify whether the shrimp show a preference for one anemone host. In the field, 45 individuals of P. ho...

Asterisks (*...*) surround words or phrases that are to be italicized. Nineteen species of sea anemones *sensu stricto* (Anthozoa: Zoantharia: Actiniaria) are documented from the Moreton Bay region in eastern Australia, based primarily on specimens observed and collected during the Moreton Bay International Marine Biological Workshop in February 20...