Four new corals recorded from Indian waters

These non-reef building, solitary corals were found in the waters of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Scientists have recorded four species of azooxanthellate corals for the first time from Indian waters. These new corals were found from the waters of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Azooxanthellate corals are a group of corals that do not contain zooxanthellae and derive nourishment not from the sun but from capturing different forms of plankton. These groups of corals are deep-sea representatives, with the majority of species reporting from between 200 m to 1000 m. Their occurrences are also reported from shallow coastal waters.

Zooxanthellate corals, meanwhile, are restricted to shallow waters.

The details of the new records have been published in Thalassas: An International Journal of Marine Sciences in a paper titled  Zoogeographic Range Extension of Four Species of Flabellid Corals Under the Genus Truncatoflabellum (Scleractinian: Flabellidae) From Indian Waters. 

Tamal Mondal, the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) scientist behind these new records, said that all the four groups of corals are from the same family Flabellidae.

Truncatoflabellum crassum (Milne Edwards and Haime, 1848), T. incrustatum (Cairns, 1989), T. aculeatum (Milne Edwards and Haime, 1848), and T. irregulare (Semper, 1872) under the family Flabellidae were previously found from Japan to the Philippines and Australian waters while only T. crassum was reported within the range of Indo-West Pacific distribution including the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Mondal said that azooxanthellate corals are a group of hard corals and the four new records are not only solitary but have a highly compressed skeletal structure.

“The most studies of hard corals in India have been concentrated on reef-building corals while much is not known about non-reef-building corals. These new records enhance our knowledge about non-reef-building, solitary corals,” he added.