Report of a Zoanthus Zone from the Cabo Verde Islands (Central Eastern Atlantic)

Cataixa Lopez (1, 2) , Rui Freitas (3) , Edita Magileviciute , Sara S. Ratao , Patrice Brehmer (4, 5) , James D. Reimer (2)

1 ULL - Universidad de La Laguna [Tenerife - SP]
2 University of the Ryukyus [Okinawa]
3 UNICV - Universidade de Cabo Verde
4 LEMAR - Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Environnement Marin (LEMAR)
5 ISRA - Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles [Dakar]

Zoanthus is a genus of colonial cnidarians very common in shallow subtropical and tropical rocky and coral reef ecosystems around the world. Some species, such as Zoanthus solanderi and Z. sociatus, can coexist and cover extensive areas in the subtidal zone of some areas in the Caribbean. We report on a Zoanthus zone' in Western Africa in a bay in the north of Maio Island in the Cabo Verde Archipelago, discovered in October 2014. Molecular analyses showed that the Maio Island carpet is formed by Z. sociatus and Z. solanderi. Similar aggregations have been reported from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in the Caribbean. This work demonstrates the presence of the Zoanthus zone' in the Central East Atlantic and adds two new records of Zoanthus species in the Cabo Verde Islands.

Mots clés: reef; Maio Island; Molecular analyses; Zoanthus sociatus; Zoanthus solanderi; ACL; West Africa; patterns; diversity; Marine biodiversity

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie; Océanographie; Zoologie des invertébrés

Cataixa Lopez, Rui Freitas, Edita Magileviciute, Sara S. Ratao, Patrice Brehmer, et al.. Report of a Zoanthus Zone from the Cabo Verde Islands (Central Eastern Atlantic). Thalassas, 2018, Thalassas, 34 (2), pp.409-413. ⟨10.1007/s41208-018-0080-3⟩. ⟨hal-02635026⟩