Scleralcyonacea

Last updated

Scleralcyonacea
Chrysogorgia NOAA.jpg
Chrysogorgia sp.
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cnidaria
Subphylum: Anthozoa
Class: Octocorallia
Order: Scleralcyonacea
McFadden, van Ofwegen & Quattrini, 2022

Scleralcyonacea is an order of the class Octocorallia. [1] [2]

Contents

It combines the traditional taxa Calcaxonia (except the genus Isis ), Pennatulacea and Helioporacea, as well as a part of Scleraxonia and a part of Stolonifera, and the genera Ideogorgia and Parasphaerasclera . [1] See below for a more detailed description.

History

A clade combining (primarily) the Calcaxonia, the Pennatulacea and the Helioporacea was identified (but not named) as early as in a 2006 study and in several later studies; it was usually called informally the Calcaxonia-Pennatulacea clade or the Pennatulacea-Calcaxonia clade. [3] [4] [5] [6] [1]

In 2019, G. C. Williams proposed (only optionally) calling the Calcaxonia-Pennatulacea clade Calcaxonia (sensu lato), [7] but other authors did not adopt this naming proposal.

The phylogenetic study McFadden et al. 2022 assigned the name Scleralcyonacea and the rank of an order to the Calcaxonia-Pennatulacea clade. The study found Octocorallia to be divided into two monophyletic lineages (both identified already by some earlier studies [3] [4] ), which the study established as the orders Scleralcyonacea and Malacalcyonacea. Scleralcyonacea was found to contain:

While the genus Isis was historically placed within Calcaxonia as a relative of Keratoisididae and Mopseidae, it was found to be unrelated, with the difference in internode growth patterns being identified as phylogenetically informative. [9]

Name

Scleralcyonacea was named after Greek σκληρός (sklēros, transl. hard) and former coral order Alcyonacea, as most of its members contain either an axial skeleton made of calcium carbonate or sclerites fused with calcitic material. [10]

Taxonomy

Scleralcyonacea contains the monophyletic sea pens (superfamily Pennatuloidea) as well as 21 other families and two incertae sedis genera. The order includes the following: [2]

Legend (traditional assignment of the taxa): [1] Ca = Calcaxonia, Pe = Pennatulacea, He = Helioporacea, St = Stolonifera, Sc = Scleraxonia, Ho = Holaxonia (sensu stricto), Al = Alcyoniina.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 McFadden, Ofwegen & Quattrini 2022, p. 18.
  2. 1 2 "WoRMS - World Register of Marine Species - Scleralcyonacea". marinespecies.org. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  3. 1 2 McFadden, C. S., France, S. C., Sánchez, J. A., & Alderslade, P. (2006). A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) based on mitochondrial protein-coding sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 41(3), 513–527.
  4. 1 2 Quattrini, A.M., Rodríguez, E., Faircloth, B.C. et al. Palaeoclimate ocean conditions shaped the evolution of corals and their skeletons through deep time. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1531–1538 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01291-1
  5. ↑ Schierwater, Bernd; DeSalle, Rob (2021-07-08). Invertebrate Zoology: A Tree of Life Approach. CRC Press. p. 176. ISBN   978-1-4822-3582-1 . Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  6. ↑ Morrissey, D., Quattrini, A.M. & Allcock, A.L. Analysis of mitogenomes from the family Keratoisididae reveals mitonuclear discordance and the presence of unknown open reading frames. Mar Biol 172, 46 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-025-04600-z
  7. ↑ Williams, Gary. (2019). A new genus and species of enigmatic gorgonian coral from the Ryukyu Archipelago, northwestern Pacific, with a discussion of calcaxonian systematics (Cnidaria, Anthozoa, Octocorallia). Zootaxa. 4701. 417-433. 10.11646/zootaxa.4701.5.2.
  8. ↑ McFadden, Ofwegen & Quattrini 2022, p. 7, 17, 18.
  9. ↑ McFadden, Ofwegen & Quattrini 2022, p. 15.
  10. ↑ McFadden, Ofwegen & Quattrini 2022, p. 21.

Works cited

Bibliography

1911 Britannica-Anthozoa-Gorgonia cavolinii.png

This Octocorallia-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.