About
203
Publications
47,134
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,027
Citations
Publications
Publications (203)
Members of the genus Pseudopterogorgia Kükenthal, 1919 are widely distributed in shallow water of the Indo-West Pacific. During an investigation of benthic biodiversity in the subtidal zone surrounding the Nanji Islands in the East China Sea, two specimens of Pseudopterogorgia were collected and described as a new species based on an integrated mor...
The Nanji Islands, designated as one of China’s national nature reserves, are renowned for their abundant microalgal resources. Changes in microalgae can serve as indicators of marine environmental shifts. Despite this significance, the absence of comprehensive historical records on microalgal diversity has limited the evaluation of marine environm...
The Venus flytrap sea anemone Actinoscyphia liui inhabits the nutrient-limited deep ocean in the tropical western Pacific. Compared with most other sea anemones, it has undergone a distinct modification of body shape similar to that of the botanic flytrap. However, the molecular mechanism by which such a peculiar sea anemone adapts to a deep-sea ol...
The black coral genus Bathypathes Brook, 1889 represents a relatively diverse and ecologically important assemblage comprising the deep-sea hard substrate communities. Recent phylogenetic investigations have revealed the polyphyletic nature of Bathypathes, urging further morphological analysis to understand its systematics. By combing morphological...
Members of the order Antipatharia Milne-Edwards & Haime, 1857 are important structural components of hard bottom communities in the shallow and deep seas. However, their diversity in the Western Pacific is poorly known. Here we describe two new species of black corals within the family Schizopathidae Brook, 1889 from the tropical Western Pacific se...
A new freshwater benthic diatom Amphora baotuensis is described from a karst spring in China, based on morphological and molecular phylogenetic data. Based on SSU rRNA and rbcL sequences the molecular phylogeny indicates that this species is closely related to A. copulata (Kützing) Schoeman & Archibald within the Amphora sensu stricto clade. Amphor...
The skeletons of aragonitic corals carry essential information about oceanic environmental changes in the past. However, coral-based geochemical proxies are sensitive to vital effect and post-depositional diagenetic processes, which have not been well understood for deep-sea corals. In this study, we have investigated the mineralization and early d...
Phytoplankton have been observed to be widely distributed in the oceanic vertical water columns and have an important contribution to carbon sequestration via biological pump mechanism. However, in seamount areas with strong hydrodynamics, their vertical export is still unclear. Moreover, considering phyto- and bacterioplankton are inseparable in t...
The topography and hydrography around seamounts have a strong influence on plankton biogeography. The intrinsic properties of various biological taxa inherently also shape their distribution. Therefore, it is hypothesized that different pelagic groups respond differently to effects of seamounts regarding their distribution and connectivity patterns...
Fallacia is distinguished morpho‐anatomically from Navicula sensu lato based on the possession of a H‐shaped chloroplast, lateral sterna and a finely porous conopeum, but whether this genus is monophyletic is still in question. Three new Fallacia species are described based on morphology and SSU rRNA and rbcL gene sequences: Fallacia tateyamensis s...
Although the extreme conditions of the deep sea (especially the darkness) are not suitable for the growth of photosynthetic algae, accumulating evidence indicates that there are diverse healthy phytoplankton living in this environment. However, living phytoplankton from the deep sea have rarely been isolated and cultivated, and so our understanding...
Understanding the way in which a decline in ocean pH can affect calcareous organisms could enhance our ability to predict the impacts of the potential decline in seawater pH on marine ecosystems, and could help to reconstruct the paleoceanographic events over a geological time scale. Planktic foraminifera are among the most important biological pro...
The Western Pacific is the most oligotrophic sea on Earth, with numerous seamounts. However, the plankton diversity and biogeography of the Western Pacific in general and the seamount regions in particular remains largely unexplored. In this project, we quantitatively analyzed the composition and distribution patterns of plankton species in the Wes...
Sea pens are a highly specialized and morphologically distinct group of octocorallians, but many taxa were poorly described and their phylogenetic relationships are still poorly known. We describe two species of sea pens collected from the tropical Western Pacific: Alloptilella splendida gen. et sp. nov. and Scytalium veneris (Thomson & Henderson,...
Three deep-sea black corals belonging to the family Schizopathidae, are reported from two seamounts on the Caroline Ridge in the tropical Western Pacific: Umbellapathes parva sp. nov. with depth of 1 488–1 766 m, Telopathes cf. magna MacIsaac & Best, 2013 with depth of 937–1 016 m, and Stauropathes cf. punctata (Roule, 1905) with depth of 942–1 353...
The ocean is an important inventory of anthropogenic mercury (Hg), yet the history of anthropogenic Hg accumulation in the ocean remains largely unexplored. Deep-sea corals are an emerging archive of past ocean chemistry, which take in sinking or suspended particulate organic matter as their food sources. Such organic matter would exchange Hg with...
Two new species of Chrysogorgia Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864 collected from the Caroline seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean are described. Chrysogorgia pinniformis sp. nov. belongs to Versluys’ group C (Squamosae typicae) with only scales in polyp body wall and tentacles. C. pinniformis sp. nov. is characterized by large branches pin...
Laetmonice Kinberg, 1856 is a remarkable genus characterized by having harpoon notochaetae in the polychaete family Aphroditidae. We describe a new species of Laetmonice, Laetmonice iocasica sp. nov., found from seamounts on the Caroline Ridge in the tropical Western Pacific. The new species is readily distinguished from congeners, particularly tho...
Two new species of free-living marine nematodes from the South China Sea are described: Gomphionema setiforme sp. nov. from intertidal sediment and Paracomesoma longissimum sp. nov. from upper continental slope sediment. Gomphionema setiforme sp. nov. is characterized by the punctated cuticle without lateral differentiation and cuticular pores; sho...
A new species of bubblegum coral, Paragorgia papillata sp. nov., discovered from a seamount located on the Caroline Ridge at the water depth of 858 m, is studied using morphological and molecular approaches. The new gorgonian is white-colored, uniplanar with prominent autozooids, and measures about 670-mm high and 690-mm wide. The genetic distance...
Members of genus Iridogorgia Verrill, 1883 are the typical deep-sea megabenthos with only seven species reported. Based on an integrated morphological-molecular approach, eight sampled specimens of Iridogorgia from seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific are identified as three new species, and two known species I. magnispiralis Watling, 2007 and...
Microeukaryotes have been recognized as highly abundant and diverse both in form and function, however, data on their diversity and distribution along marine currents remain scarce. Herein, the distribution of microeukaryotes in surface seawaters was analyzed along a 9000 km stretch of the North Equatorial Current (NEC) and its bifurcation using hi...
The family Pseudokeronopsidae Borror & Wicklow, 1983 has an extensive history of iterative revisions regarding phylogenetic relationships of its members and some related taxa from the order Urostylida. The accumulation of morphological and multigene data has provided the opportunity to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their systematic and...
The scuticociliatid ciliates Ancistrum haliotis and A. crassum are parasites that may cause high mortality in the cultured abalone Haliotis spp. and the bivalve Ruditapes philippinarum. Traditional identification with silver staining methods is hampered by their morphological similarities to closely related species and the complicated procedures of...
The diversity and distribution of Hippodonta species on the coast of China are largely unknown due to limited investigations. In this paper, we report the detailed morphology and ultrastructure of two new species: H. nanjiensis sp. nov., collected from intertidal sandy sediments of Nanji Islands, the East China Sea and H. qingdaoensis sp. nov., col...
The Yellow Sea Cold Water Mass (YSCWM) is a unique hydrological phenomenon in the central Yellow Sea, resulting in different macrobenthos community compositions inside and outside the YSCWM. However, this pattern in benthic microeukaryotes has never been identified by morphological methods and DNA sequencing. To determine whether microeukaryotes di...
Citation: Xu Y, Zhan Z, Xu K (2020) Morphology and phylogenetic analysis of five deep-sea golden gorgonians (Cnidaria, Octocorallia, Chrysogorgiidae) in the Western Pacific Ocean, with the description of a new species. ZooKeys 989: 1-37. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.989.53104 Abstract Explorations of seamounts in the Western Pacific Ocean and So...
The bathymetric gradient is one of the most important factors that regulate the distribution of life. However, community variations of benthic ciliates along bathymetric gradients in the deep sea remain rather unexplored. In this study, we hypothesize that in the deep sea, the bathymetric gradient shapes the benthic ciliate community composition ra...
Members of Scleraxonia Studer, 1887 are one of the most dominant megafaunal taxa on seamounts, but their diversity and spatial distribution are poorly known in the tropical Western Pacific. Among this group, the family Victorgorgiidae Moore et al., 2017 is typically characterized by josephinae clubs in their polyp tentacles and a remarkable purple...
Habitat differentiation is the essential force for shaping animal and plant biogeography. Distribution patterns of microeukaryotes, which are an assemblage of highly diverse and phylogenetically distant groups, across multiple marine habitats remain largely unknown. We hypothesize that microeukaryote communities vary across different types of marin...
Three benthic Gyrosigma species isolated from sediments of a tropical mangrove in Hainan Island, China, are described using light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy: G. centropunctatum sp. nov., G. dongzhaiense sp. nov. and G. orbitum Thaler et Kaczmarska. Gyrosigma centropunctatum is a tube-dwelling species possessing a unique row of p...
Pseudokeronopsis rubra (Ehrenberg, 1836), type species of Pseudokeronopsis, is a widely reported but taxonomically confused species with most available sequences either misidentified or dubious. Based on the Yellow Sea population, of which the molecular data have been analyzed in a previous work, we redescribe P. rubra and try to clarify the identi...
The virus-to-prokaryote ratio (VPR), which reflects the numerical dominance of viruses over their hosts, has been proposed as a proxy for assessing the relationship between viruses and prokaryotes. Previous studies showed that VPR values fluctuate over six orders of magnitude within and across various benthic ecosystems, with an average value of ap...
Three new species of Chrysogorgia were discovered from seamounts in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean. Chrysogorgia dendritica sp. nov. and Chrysogorgia fragilis sp. nov. were collected from the Kocebu Guyot of the Magellan Seamount chain with the water depth of 1,821 m and 1,279–1,321 m, respectively, and Chrysogorgia gracilis sp. nov. was collec...
The Yellow Sea Cold Water Mass (YSCWM) is a distinct hydrographic phenomenon of the Yellow Sea, and the distribution pattern of meio- and macrobenthos differs inside and outside of the YSCWM. However, such a pattern has never been observed in the microbenthic ciliate communities. Therefore, we hypothesized that benthic ciliates followed a similar d...
Microeukaryotes are mainly composed of highly diverse and abundant protists, whose diversity and distribution in deep oceans have not been well studied. We investigated the vertical profiles of microeukaryotes throughout the water column down to abyssal sediments and their horizontal distribution over a distance of 1,300 km in the Western Pacific O...
Two new species of deep-sea chrysogorgiid gorgonians are described from the tropical Western Pacific: Iridogorgia densispicula n. sp. from an unnamed seamount in the Caroline Plate with water depth of 1204 m and Iridogorgia squarrosa n. sp. from an unnamed seamount near the Mariana Trench with water depth of 1458 m. Iridogorgia densispicula n. sp....
Two new species of Chrysogorgia Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864 collected from Kocebu Guyot in the Magellan seamounts of the Pacific Ocean are described and illustrated: Chrysogorgia ramificanssp. nov. collected from a depth of 1831 m and Chrysogorgia binatasp. nov. collected from a depth of 1669 m. Chrysogorgia ramificanssp. nov. belongs to the Chr...
Condylostoma, the type genus of the family Condylostomatidae, is a well‐known and taxonomically confusing genus with more than 30 nominal species. The phylogenetic relationships among congeners and related genera remain obscure despite the continuous discovery of new species and detailed redescription of known species over the past decades. Based o...
A new species of the genus Thalassironus de Man, 1889, which was discovered from marine sediments in the South China Sea, is described here as Thalassironus filiformis sp. nov. The new species is characterized by having short outer labial setae and cephalic setae of equal length, long filiform tail, buccal cavity with three anterior teeth and three...
Diversity assessments using the small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene allow for rapid assessments of microeukaryotic communities. Yet, for microeukaryotes, only limited information is available on the extent to which sequence variations within individual genomes exist at this locus. We investigated 14 marine species belonging to four major ciliate groups b...
Three new species of Fallacia, F. miyajimensis sp. nov., F. nodulifera sp. nov., and F. similigemmifera sp. nov. are described from intertidal sediments in Japan. Their morphologies are studied with light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Fallacia miyajimensis differs from congeners in the presence of an apical pore, a finely porous c...
A new marine benthic diatom, Pleurosira nanjiensis sp. nov., is described from the rocky intertidal zone of the Xiaochaiyu Island of the Nanji Islands in China. Its morphology was examined with light and scanning electron microscopy. Molecular phylogeny was reconstructed based on SSU rRNA and rbcL gene sequences. Pleurosira nanjiensis differs from...
Actinonema falciforme sp. nov. was discovered from the continental-shelf sediments of the East China Sea. It is characterized by six outer labial setae and four cephalic setae in one circle, complex and heterogeneous cuticular ornamentation with lateral differentiation, large and conspicuous amphideal fovea which is transversely ovalshaped, a singl...
The living morphology and infraciliature of six spirotrichous ciliates collected from the coastal South China Sea were investigated using live observation and protargol impregnation. These are Euplotes woodruffi Gaw, 1939, Hemigastrostyla enigmatica (Dragesco and Dragesco-Kernéis, 1986) Song and Wilbert, 1997, Neourostylopsis flavicana (Wang et al....
A taxonomic study of Hyalinoecia species based on the materials deposited in the Marine Biological Museum of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (MBMCAS) yielded two species: Hyalinoecia tubicola (Müller, 1776) and H. papillata Imajima, 1999. Both species were collected from the sandy bottoms in the northern South China Sea. Hyalinoecia tubicola is wid...
Four species of Trichodina parasitizing the gills of cultured molluscs and fishes in China are described: Trichodina pectenis Stein, 1974 from the scallop Mizuhopecten yessoensis; Trichodina jadranica Raabe, 1958 from the fishes Mugil cephalus and Anguilla bicolor bicolor; Trichodina acuta Lom, 1961 and Trichodina rostrata Kulemina, 1968 from the f...
The diversity of marine benthic ciliates is largely known from the intertidal zone. No comparative data are available for the change of ciliate communities from the intertidal to offshore sediments in the Yellow Sea. We investigated the community composition and diversity of benthic ciliates at two intertidal (sandy and silty-sand) stations and eig...
A new species belonging to the subfamily Macellicephalinae (Annelida: Polynoidae), Levensteiniella manusensis sp. nov., is described based on material collected from deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Manus Back-Arc Basin. The new species is readily distinguished from the congeners by having two pairs of ventral papillae on segments 11 and 12, the...
Two new species of the family Selachinematidae Cobb, 1915 from an intertidal sandy flat in the East China Sea are described. Both species are distinct rapacious nematodes, preying on other nematodes. Gammanema magnum sp. nov. is characterized by its leaf-like labial setae, large loop-shaped amphideal fovea in the male and small spiral ones in the f...
Seamounts are undersea mountains rising abruptly from the sea floor and interacting dynamically with underwater currents. They represent unique biological habitats with various microbial community structures. Certain seamount bacteria form conspicuous extracellular iron oxide structures, including encrusted stalks, flattened bifurcating tubes, and...
The deep sea is one of the largest but least understood ecosystems on earth. Knowledge about the diversity and distribution patterns as well as drivers of microbial eukaryote (including ciliates) along the water column, particularly below the photic zone, is scarce. In this study, we investigated the diversity of pelagic ciliates, the main group of...
Using light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and SSU rDNA and rbcL gene sequencing, we investigated three marine benthic diatoms: Haslea avium Tiffany, Herwig et Sterrenburg; H. feriarum Tiffany et Sterrenburg and H. tsukamotoi Sterrenburg et Hinz collected from intertidal sediments in China. These are the first records of these thre...
The thigmotrich scuticociliates Boveria labialis and Boveria subcylindrica are obligate parasites that may cause high mortality in cultured sea cucumbers and bivalves. Morphological methods can identify these organisms in active state, but are unable to discern them in resting stages. In aquaculture practice, these parasitic ciliates are hard to er...
Two new species of marine nematodes, Paramphimonhystrella longispicula sp. n. in the deep-sea sediments from the Philippine Sea in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean with the water depth of 3920–5176 m and P. eurystoma sp. n. in the shelf seafloor from the East China Sea with the water depth of 55–64 m, are described. Both species possess long and...
A new species of azooxanthellate solitary Scleractinia, Placotrochides yapensis n. sp., is described from the foot of a seamount near the Yap Trench in the tropical Western Pacific at the water depth of 2,700–2,734 m. The specimens are assigned to the genus Placotrochides Alcock, 1902 on account of possessing a solitary corallum, a trabecular colum...
To know the status and 20 years’ variation of benthic diatom biodiversity and community structure in intertidal sandy sediment in the Nanji Islands National Marine Nature Reserve (NINMNR) of China, we investigated community composition and seasonal variations of marine benthic diatoms between November 2013 and August 2014 in the intertidal zone of...