Versuriga anadyomene, a newly recorded scyphozoan jellyfish (Scyphozoa: Rhizostomae) in Chinese waters

Abstract

Scyphozoans are currently causing great concern worldwide due to the effects of their blooms on the marine environment. During a field survey in Beibu Gulf, South China Sea, on 27 May 2015, we found specimens of a rhizostome jellyfish that had not previously been recorded in Chinese seas. The morphological characters and DNA sequences of several specimens were examined in the laboratory. These specimens had the following morphological characters: hemispherical umbrella with reticular grooves; eight large semicircular velar lappets alternating with narrow lappets in each of the 8 octants; laterally flattened mouth-arms with numerous flat, membranous branches bearing many clubs and intermediate filaments; non-anastomosed broad perradial canals and anastomosed narrow interradial canals. The morphological characters of these rhizostome jellyfish were consistent with descriptions of Versuriga anadyomene. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial 16S rDNA and nuclear 18S rDNA gene fragments confirmed that these specimens were in the same cluster as V. anadyomene collected in Palau. Therefore, this rhizostome jellyfish was identified as V. anadyomene. This is the first record of the genus Versuriga and the species V. anadyomene in Chinese seas. The arrival of this species may be attributed to physical transport from the coastal waters of South East Asia.

Demystifying Cassiopea species identity in the Florida Keys: Cassiopea xamachana and Cassiopea andromeda coexist in shallow waters

“…A subset of 11 representative COI sequences from individuals collected in this study (see Table 1 and S1 Table in S1 File ) were aligned with Cassiopea COI GenBank sequences from Holland et al 2004, Morandini et al 2016 [ 17 ], Daglio et al 2017, Abboud et al 2018, Gamero-Mora et al 2022, Kayal et al 2013, and Mastigias and Versuriga from Swift et al 2016 and Sun et al 2019 (see table) using MAFFT 7 (L-INS-i) [ 22 – 25 ]. The final COI dataset was composed of 89 sequences, 11 of which were produced here, all trimmed to 514bp.…”