Tubulanus superbus (Kölliker, 1845)

Çinar, Melih Ertan, 2014, Checklist of the phyla Platyhelminthes, Xenacoelomorpha, Nematoda, Acanthocephala, Myxozoa, Tardigrada, Cephalorhyncha, Nemertea, Echiura, Brachiopoda, Phoronida, Chaetognatha, and Chordata (Tunicata, Cephalochordata,, Turkish Journal of Zoology 38 (6), pp. 698-722 : 716-719

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.3906/zoo-1405-70

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/5950B572-721E-BA5B-887F-CBCFFE8C36F6

treatment provided by

Felipe

scientific name

Tubulanus superbus (Kölliker, 1845)
status

 

Tubulanus superbus (Kölliker, 1845) View in CoL

( Figure 3C View Figure 3 )

Notes: Body thick, ca. 35 cm long, gradually narrowing behind distinct rounded head to bluntly pointed tail. Color dark reddish brown, marked with mid-ventral, mid-dorsal, and lateral longitudinal white stripes and almost 120 white rings. First 2 and 3 rings widely spaced, the others closer together and somewhat uniformly distributed along body.

Distribution: This species was found on muddy sand bottom (1 specimen) at 50 m depth in the Sea of Marmara (station 1) and at 25 m depth in Fethiye Bay (station 3). It is an Atlanto-Mediterranean species ( Gibson, 1994).

Drepanogigas albolineatus (Bürger, 1895)

Notes: Body slender, dorsoventrally flattened, tapering gradually, up to 7 cm long. Head is relatively small, heartshaped, clearly separated from body. Background color reddish-brown, dorsum with 5 white longitudinal stripes. Eyes large, numerous.

Distribution: This species was only observed on sandy bottom (1 specimen) at 20 m depth at station 3. It is an Atlanto-Mediterranean species ( Wirtz, 2006).

Phoronis australis Wright, 1856

( Figure 3D View Figure 3 )

Notes: Specimens 30–45 mm in length, 1–2 mm in diameter. Live coloration light pink, while lophophore white and spiraled (2.5–3.4 turns). Tentacles 2–4 mm long, numbering ca. 800–1000 per individual.

Distribution: This species was observed only in association with tubes of Cerianthus membranaceus (Spallanzani, 1784) (many specimens) at 10–20 m depths at stations 2 and 3. It is an Atlanto-Mediterranean species ( Ocaña et al., 1991).

Ciona roulei Lahille, 1887

( Figure 3E View Figure 3 )

Notes: Tunic smooth, 7 cm long. Animal transparent with reddish area around siphons; with 8 buccal lobes. Each side of body having 4 major muscle bundles.

Distribution: It was found under stones (6 specimens) at 15 m at stations 2 and 3. It is a species endemic to the Mediterranean ( Harant and Vernières, 1933).

Polyclinella azemai Harant, 1930

( Figure 3F View Figure 3 )

Notes: A colonial species, with a ball-like appearance, ca. 3 cm in diameter, brownish-red in color. Surface shining with sand inclusions. Zooids almost 5 mm in length.

Distribution: A colony of this species was only encountered on a rock at 3 m depth near Fethiye Harbor. It is a species endemic to the Mediterranean Sea ( Harant and Vernières, 1933).

Three species were excluded from the checklist: 1) Öktener (2005) reported Scolex pleuronectis Müller, 1788 ( Cestoda) on different fishes collected from the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea, but Bray (2014) regarded the species name as unacceptable as it is in fact a larval name; 2) Ascidia cretacea was identified as a new species by Ostroumoff (1896) at 496 m depth in the Sea of Marmara, but as he did not provide a detailed description or figures, this species name was regarded as nomen nudum; 3) the actual status of Desmodora pontica Filipjev, 1922 , which was reported from the Sinop Peninsula by Ürkmez et al. (2011), is unaccepted ( Vanaverbeke and Vincx, 2014).

The phylum Platyhelminthes was represented by 81 free-living species and 105 parasitic species on the coasts of Turkey. Within this phylum, the class Trematoda was represented by 57 species, Monogenea by 33 species, Cestoda by 13 species, and Rhabditophora by 83 species. The class Rhabditophora included all free-living flatworms known from the area, except for Graffilla parasitica and Urastoma cyprinae , the former of which infected the sea slug Tethys fimbria in İzmir Bay ( Forbes, 1844). The parasitic flatworms were exclusively reported on fishes, but Parvatrema duboisi and Urastoma cyprinae were only reported on the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamarck, 1819 in the Black Sea ( Özer and Güneydağ, 2014).

The highest number of invertebrate Chordata species (36 species) was encountered on the Levantine coast of Turkey ( Figure 2 View Figure 2 ). No species of Xenacoelomorpha was reported from the Aegean Sea or Levantine Sea, whereas this phylum was represented by 3 species in the Sea of Marmara and 7 species in the Black Sea. One or 2 species of the phyla Myxozoa, Tardigrada, and Cephalorhyncha were determined only in the Black Sea ( Băcescu, 1961; Kharkevych and Sergeeva, 2013; Özer and Yurakhno, 2013). Except for the Black Sea, Bonellia viridis , an echiuran species, was reported from all coasts of Turkey. Of the subphyla of Chordata considered in this paper, Tunicata had the highest number of species (61 species), followed by Hemichordata (2 species) and Cephalochordata (1 species).

The majority of the free-living flatworms (class Rhabditophora) were found in muddy or sandy bottoms (48 species), whereas 27 species were only reported on hard bottoms. Only 4 rhabditophoran species ( Promesostoma maculosum , Duplominona istanbulensis , Microstomum papillosum , and Cylindromacrostomum mediterraneum ) were found at depths deeper than 100 m, while the other species were distributed between 0 and 50 m. Almost 50% of the acoel worms within the phylum Xenacoelomorpha reported from Turkey occurred on soft substrata. Of the 20 nematode species present in the marine fauna of Turkey, 6 species are free-living, occurring on the soft substrata at depths ranging from 0 to 200 m, while the others are parasitic on different fishes including Raja clavata Linnaeus 1758 , Gaidropsarus mediterraneus (Linnaeus 1758) , and Mullus surmuletus Linnaeus 1758 . Two tardigrades ( Dipodarctus subterraneus and Tanarctus ramazzotti ) were reported on muddy substratum at 88– 250 m depth in the pre-Bosphorus region ( Kharkevych and Sergeeva, 2013). In Turkey, the nemertean, echiuran, and phoronid species were found only in shallow-water benthic habitats, whereas the brachiopod species generally inhabited depths deeper than 50 m. Phoronis australis was always observed in association with the actinarian species Cerianthus membranaceus (present study). Except for Thaliacea and Appendicularia, which are zooplankton, the invertebrate Chordata species were generally found on hard substrata in shallow waters.

Since studies on the free-living species of the phyla Platyhelminthes and Xenacoelomorpha are mainly concentrated on the İstanbul Strait and its vicinity (i.e. Ax, 1959a, 1959b), the highest number of species were reported from these areas ( Figure 4A View Figure 4 ). Along the coasts of Turkey, these animals have only been reported in 7 areas. In the Aegean Sea, only 6 polyclad species have been reported from the inner part of İzmir Bay (near Alsancak Harbor), 5 of which ( Imogine melihertani , Pseudoplanocera izmirensis , Izmira cinari , Izmira turkeyi , and Pseudodiscocelis aegeanensis ) were described as new to science ( Bulnes, 2010). On the Levantine coast of Turkey, 6 flatworm species ( Prostheceraeus roseus , Prostheceraeus vittatus , Prostheceraeus giesbrechtii , Stylostomum ellipse , Planocera cf. graffi , and Pseudoceros maximum ) have been encountered up to date, mainly from Fethiye Bay and Kaş ( Gözcelioğlu, 2011; this study).

İzmir Bay and Fethiye Bay can be classified as hotspot areas in terms of the number of tunicate species ( Figure 4B View Figure 4 ). The tunicate fauna of the Black Sea and the Levantine coasts of Turkey is little-known, except for the Black Sea entrance of the İstanbul Strait and Fethiye Bay. However, tunicates were determined in many parts of the Aegean Sea. As for the pelagic class of Tunicata, Appendicularia, it can be seen in Figure 5 View Figure 5 that the highest number of species have been reported from the Aegean Sea (specifically from İzmir Bay, Kuşadası Bay, and off Akköy). Except for İskenderun Bay, where only Oikopleura (Vexillaria) cophocerca was reported ( Lakkis and Toklu, 2007), the Levantine coast of Turkey remained unexplored for this group of animals. In the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, only Oikopleura (Vexillaria) dioica was encountered (i.e. Kiseleva, 1969; İşinibilir et al., 2011).

Four alien tunicate ( Symplegma brakenhielmi , Microcosmus exasperatus , Herdmania momus , and Phallusia nigra ) and 1 alien chaetognath ( Ferosagitta galerita ) species were reported from the coast of Turkey. Except for M. exasperatus , which was recently reported from İzmir Bay ( Ramos-Espla et al., 2013), these species were previously included in the marine alien species list of Turkey ( Çinar et al., 2011). All species were introduced to the Mediterranean Sea from the Red Sea via the Suez Canal (Lessepsian migrants).

The present study shed more light on the diversity of the phyla Platyhelminthes, Xenacoelomorpha, Nematoda, Acanthocephala, Myxozoa, Tardigrada, Cephalorhyncha, Nemertea, Echiura, Brachiopoda, Phoronida, Chaetognatha, and Chordata (invertebrates,

ÇINAR / Turk J Zool only Tunicata, Cephalochordata, and Hemichordata), the majority of which have not been specifically studied in Turkey. The number of species given in the checklist in fact does not reflect the real diversity of these phyla along the coasts of Turkey since many areas and biotopes, especially deep water and coralligenous habitats, still remained largely unexplored.

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