Unravelling the relationships among Madrepora Linnaeus, 1758, Oculina Lamark, 1816 and Cladocora Ehrenberg, 1834 (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Scleractinia)

Anna M. Addamo; Melinda S. Modrell; Marco Taviani; Annie Machordom

doi:10.1071/IS23027

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Contents Vol 38(4)

Unravelling the relationships among Madrepora Linnaeus, 1758, Oculina Lamark, 1816 and Cladocora Ehrenberg, 1834 (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Scleractinia)

Anna M. Addamo

^A ^B ^C ^F ^* , Melinda S. Modrell

^A , Marco Taviani

^D ^E and Annie Machordom

^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), E-28006 Madrid, Spain.

^B European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), I-21027 Ispra, Italy.

^C Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC), University of Insubria, I-21100 Varese, Italy.

^D Istituto di Scienze Marine, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISMAR-CNR), I-40129 Bologna, Italy.

^E Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, I-80121 Napoli, Italy.

^F Present address: Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, Nord University, NO-8049 Bodø, Norway.

^* Correspondence to: am.addamo@gmail.com

Handling Editor: Allen Collins

Invertebrate Systematics 38, IS23027 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS23027

Submitted: 8 June 2023 Accepted: 18 March 2024 Published: 29 April 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of integrative taxonomic approaches, many scleractinian coral genera and species remain grouped in polyphyletic families, classified as incertae sedis or simply understudied. Oculinidae Gray, 1847 represents a family for which many taxonomic questions remain unresolved, particularly those related to some of the current genera, such as Oculina Lamark, 1816 or recently removed genera, including Cladocora Ehrenberg, 1834 and Madrepora Linnaeus, 1758. Cladocora is currently assigned to the family Cladocoridae Milne Edwards & Haime, 1857 and a new family, Bathyporidae Kitahara, Capel, Zilberberg & Cairns, 2024, was recently raised to accommodate Madrepora. However, the name Bathyporidae is not valid because this was not formed on the basis of a type genus name. To resolve taxonomic questions related to these three genera, the evolutionary relationships are explored through phylogenetic analyses of 18 molecular markers. The results of these analyses support a close relationship between the species Oculina patagonica and Cladocora caespitosa, indicating that these may belong to the same family (and possibly genus), and highlighting the need for detailed revisions of Oculina and Cladocora. By contrast, a distant relationship is found between these two species and Madrepora oculata, with the overall evidence supporting the placement of Madrepora in the resurrected family Madreporidae Ehrenberg, 1834. This study advances our knowledge of coral systematics and highlights the need for a comprehensive review of the genera Oculina, Cladocora and Madrepora.

Keywords: cold-water corals, incertae sedis, Mediterranean Sea, molecular markers, phylogeny reconstruction, polyphyly, systematics, taxonomy.

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