Diplosoma listerianum (Milne Edwards, 1841)

Turon, Xavier, Cañete, Juan I., Sellanes, Javier, Rocha, Rosana M. & López-Legentil, Susanna, 2016, Ascidian fauna (Tunicata, Ascidiacea) of subantarctic and temperate regions of Chile, Zootaxa 4093 (2), pp. 151-180 : 157

Diplosoma listerianum (Milne Edwards, 1841)

References and synonymy: Diplosoma macdonaldi Van Name (1945) p. 109; Diplosoma listerianum (Berrill 1950) p. 125.

Localities: 1N, 2N, 3N, 6N, 8N.

Remarks. this well-known species is common in artificial structures and bivalve culture gear in the Coquimbo area, where it also occurs occasionally on natural substrates. Diplosoma listerianum is a widely distributed taxon, described in the NE Atlantic but nowadays present in all warm-temperate seas (Locke 2009). It has recently been shown to comprise five main mitochondrial clades, likely cryptic species (Pérez-Portela et al. 2013). The specimens from Coquimbo belong to Clade A of that work, the most invasive one. It was first reported in the SE Pacific by Pérez-Portela et al. (2013) in the Coquimbo and Antofagasta areas, and it was later reported also from the Patagonian Fjords zone (Schories et al. 2015).