Short Communication |
Corresponding author: Zachary B. Hancock ( zhancock@bio.tamu.edu ) Academic editor: Bert W. Hoeksema
© 2017 Zachary B. Hancock, Janelle A. Goeke, Mary K. Wicksten.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Hancock ZB, Goeke JA, Wicksten MK (2017) A sea anemone of many names: a review of the taxonomy and distribution of the invasive actiniarian Diadumene lineata (Diadumenidae), with records of its reappearance on the Texas coast. ZooKeys 706: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.706.19848
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Diadumene lineata (Actiniaria: Diadumenidae) is a prolific invader of coastal environments around the world. First described from Asia, this sea anemone has only been reported once from the western Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas, Texas. No subsequent sampling has located this species at this locality. The first record of the reappearance of D. lineata on the Texas coast from three locations in the Galveston Bay area is provided, and its geographic distribution and taxonomic history reviewed.
Galveston Island, Gulf of Mexico, invasive species, salt marsh, Texas coast
Diadumene lineata (Verrill, 1869) is perhaps the most widespread actiniarian in the world (
There exist only two reports of D. lineata in the Gulf of Mexico, most recently by Minasian and Marsical (1979) from northwestern Florida. The earlier record is from Port Aransas, Texas at the University of Texas Marine Research Station (
The small (5–10 mm in diameter), often inconspicuous sea anemone is dark green or brown with orange, yellow, white, or green vertical stripes (
To date, D. lineata has been discovered at three separate locations in the Galveston Bay area (Figure
As the anemones were dark green with the characteristic orange or white stripes, they were readily diagnosed as D. lineata. This is one of the few species of anemones that is unmistakable by color pattern (
Synonyms, misidentifications, and their localities for D. lineata (after
Taxonomic identification | Locality | Source |
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Actinia chrysosplenium | St. Ives, Cornwall |
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Actinea chrysoplinum* | Falmouth, Cornwall |
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Actinea chrysosplenum* | Falmouth, Cornwall |
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Bunodes chrysosplenium | Britain |
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Sagartia chrysosplenium | Cornwall |
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Chrysoela chrysosplenium | Cornwall |
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Sagartia lineata | Hong Kong |
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Sagartia chrysosplenium* | Britain |
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Sagartia pustulata | North Carolina |
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Sagartia luciae | Woods Hole, Massachusetts |
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Sagartia davisi | San Pedro, California |
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Diadumene luciae | Britain |
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Aiptasiomorpha luciae | Oregon |
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Haliplanella luciae | California |
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Haliplanela luciae* | France | Dominique et al. 1985 |
Diadumene lineata | Wells-next-the-sea, Norfolk |
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Haliplanella lucia* | Korean Strait |
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Haliphlanella luciae* | N/A |
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Haliplanella lineata | Europe |
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Haliplannella luciae* | N/A |
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Haliplanella liciae* | China |
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Verrill (1871) described Sagartia lineata, a species he stated to be “common on stones and pebbles among gravel” that had been collected by Dr. William Stimpson on the Hong Kong harbor.
While
To our knowledge, no comprehensive molecular study exists suggesting that D. lineata is a species complex instead of a single, worldwide species. However, D. lineata populations do harbor greater genetic diversity than had been previously thought (
Organisms found in association with D. lineata were those typical of Texas coast oyster reefs, including corophiid amphipods, an array of polychaete worms, nemerteans, cheilostomate bryozoans, xanthid crabs, the anomurans Clibanarius vittatus Dana and Petrolisthes armatus Gibbes, and the solitary ascidian, Molgula sp.
While D. lineata has been reported as cosmopolitan (
Therefore, based on the assumed disappearance of the Port Aransas population, the current report represents a reappearance of D. lineata on the Texas coast, and the first established population in the western Gulf of Mexico to the best of our knowledge. Other locations, including Christmas Bay (29°53.4'N, 95°6.9'W>) and the Fin and Feather Reef on Redfish Bay (27°53.4'N, 97°6.9'W), have been examined in the past, but no sea anemones were found (Wicksten, personal observation). Based on the three separate observations of the Galveston Bay D. lineata populations, which occurred across a range of locations and dates, we are confident that D. lineata is well established in the bay. Salt marshes near the Sportsman Road jetty were examined for any association between D. lineata and S. alterniflora as reported by
It is unsurprising that D. lineata became established in Galveston Bay of all locations in the western Gulf. An enormous amount of cargo passes through Galveston Bay every year, as passage through the Bay is required to reach not only the Port of Galveston, but also the much larger ports of Houston and Texas City. In 2015 the American Association of Port Authorities ranked the ports of Houston and Texas City 1st and 15th respectively in terms of the total tons of annual foreign imports (
The generic position of D. lineata still appears in dispute, as the taxonomic review above indicated, while the specific name D. lineata seems accepted due to precedent (
We thank Anna Armitage of Texas A&M University-Galveston for allowing us to use her lab for this work, and Alex Sutherland of Texas A&M University-Galveston for sharing her observations of East Beach with us. We would also like to thank the reviewer for helpful comments and time dedicated to our manuscript. This review was possible thanks to the exhaustive database Hexacorallians of the World, compiled and maintained by Daphne Fautin.