Asteronychidae, Ljungman, 1867

Nethupul, Hasitha, Stöhr, Sabine & Zhang, Haibin, 2022, New species, redescriptions and new records of deep-sea brittle stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from the South China Sea, an integrated morphological and molecular approach, European Journal of Taxonomy 810 (1), pp. 1-95 : 74

Family Asteronychidae

Final 581 bp partial COI and 443 bp partial 16S sequences were obtained after removing ambiguous aligned sites and successfully used in reconstructing a Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree from 16S (8 specimens) and COI (7 specimens), respectively ( Fig. 43 ). In the 16S ML tree, species of Asteronyx were divided into two subclades (Sub-Clades 01 and 02). Sub-Clade 01 consists of A. loveni ( Japan, East China Sea and South China Sea) and A. longifissus Döderlein, 1927 (California) . Sub-Clade 02 consists of A. reticulata (East China Sea and Japan) and A. luzonicus (South China Sea) ( Fig. 43A ). Similar results were found in the COI ML tree ( Fig. 43B ). Genetic distance values are provided in Suppl. file 1 and Suppl. file 2. Two samples of A. reticulata from Japan and the East China Sea had identical sequences and three samples of A. loveni from Japan, the East China Sea and the South China Sea also showed no sequence variation (Suppl. file 1).

Figures

Fig. 43. Family Asteronychidae Ljungman, 1867, Maximum likelihood (ML) trees based on partial 16S and COI sequences (bootstrap support values were generated with rapid bootstrapping algorithm for 1000 replicates). A. 16S ML. B. COI ML. Abbreviations: ECS = East China Sea; JP = Japan; SC = Sub-Clade; SCS = South China Sea.