Abstract
Zoantharians represent a group of marine invertebrates widely distributed from shallow waters to the deep sea. Despite a high diversity and abundance in the rocky reefs of the Pacific Ocean, very few studies have been reported on the diversity of this group in the Tropical Eastern Pacific coasts. While molecular techniques recently clarified some taxonomic relationships within the order, the taxonomy of zoantharians is still highly challenging due to a lack of clear morphological characters and confusing use of different data in previous studies. Our first insight into the zoantharian diversity at El Pelado Marine Protected Area - Ecuador led to the identification of six species: Terrazoanthus patagonichus; Terrazoanthus sp.; Antipathozoanthus hickmani; Parazoanthus darwini; Zoanthus cf. pulchellus; and Zoanthus cf. sociatus. A metabolomic approach using UHPLC-HRMS was proven to be very efficient as a complementary tool in the systematics of these species and specialized metabolites of the ecdysteroid and alkaloid families were identified as key biomarkers for interspecific discrimination. These results show good promise for an application of this integrative approach to other zoantharians.
Highlights
National park)[11], the zoantharian diversity remains to be fully assessed over most of the Eastern Pacific and especially off the Ecuadorian coast[8]
Specimens from Z6 showed similarities with the Atlantic Z. sociatus and Z. sansibaricus widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific
We identified a high diversity of zoantharians in a small area off mainland Ecuador with six species present from intertidal to deeper waters (30 m), including three potentially new species
Summary
National park)[11], the zoantharian diversity remains to be fully assessed over most of the Eastern Pacific and especially off the Ecuadorian coast[8]. Marine invertebrates are good candidates for the use of metabolic information as they are known to produce a large diversity of specialized metabolites called natural products[38] Unlike primary metabolites, these small organic molecules are not directly involved in the development of the organism, but their rather specific ecological roles make them good candidates in an integrative systematics approach. In a recent study on the use of metabolomics to assess geographical versus specific metabolomic variability for two species of the genus Palythoa along the Brazilian coast, the authors observed a higher intraspecific variability comparing to the interspecific one, questioning the use of metabolomics for the discrimination between zoantharian species[48] Such contradictory results prompted us to investigate the potential of metabolomics as a complementary tool to morphological and molecular data in species identification of zoantharians collected in the REMAPE, Ecuador
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