1. Diversity and systematics of sea anemones
Meg Daly
Adorian Ardelean
Ha Rim Cha

2. Acknowledgments
Michel Clareboudt, staff & faculty of Marine Sciences, SQU
Daphne Fautin
American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Science Foundation, KU Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center

3. Sea Anemones Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Actiniaria
This afternoon, I am going to be discussing my recently completed dissertation research, and the research that Daphne Fautin and I are working on now as part of her Peet grant. All of this research involves these creatures, sea anemones or actiniarians.
When I began graduate school, I was generally interested in invertebrate zoology and systematics. I chose to focus on sea anemones because they present several intriguing systematic and biological problems.
First, although sea anemones are conspicuous, and familiar, our understanding of their anatomy, life history and biology is pretty poor. Most of what we know is concentrated on just a few species, on the animals that are unusually large, or hardy in aquaria, or very widespread. Most anemones have been found once, or maybe twice, and next to nothing is known about their biology or natural history beyond the few anatomical details necessary for a basic species description. Many of the tools that we now use to describe species, like differential interference microscopy, or electron microscopy, which allow us to differentiate between nematocyst types, and much of the insight we have into the way these animals work- like our knowledge of the nervous system, or the behavior and reproductive biology of anemones- have only come to light in the past 40 or so years. This has changed the way we conceive of even well-known taxa.
Secondly, there is no real framework for organizing the knowledge that we do have. The systematics of the Anthozoa are pretty bad at the higher level- we are still in the process of defining ordinal boundaries, and many families and perhaps most genera are not monophyletic. The simplicity of the anthozoan body plan, and our limited understanding of it is both cause and effect in terms of the state of systematic knowledge—we know very little about most anemone species, and this makes it hard to understand relationships between taxa, or interpret the variability and range of morphological features. And because we have no real grasp of variability, or homology, it becomes difficult to extend what we do know, or to make meaningful comparisons between taxa.
I am going to be discussing these issues in the context of my research one particular family of sea anemones, the Edwardsiidae.

4. Sea Anemones Cnidaria Anthozoa Actiniaria
2 layered, organ-less body, with stinging nematocysts
Anthozoa
Polyp form only
Actiniaria
Skeleton-less, solitary or clonal (not colonial)

5. Subclass Hexacorallia
Antipatharia
Actiniaria
Actiniaria
Ceriantharia
Ceriantharia
Antipatharia
Zoanthidea
Scleractinia
Zoanthidea
Corallimorpharia
Scleractinia

6. Why study anemones? Diverse in habitat, biology, life history
Understand evolution of colonies and skeletons among Anthozoa
Understand evolution of tissues, organs, and polarity in animals

7. Overview Anemone diversity & systematics
Morphology & variability of Actinodendridae
Diversity & systematics of Corallimorpharia

8. Systematics & Diversity of Actiniaria
Habitat
Biology
Life history
Systematics
Identification
Morphology
Molecules
Role of Biodiversity Studies
Evolution
Biogeography

9. Anemone diversity--typical habits
Attached to rocks or coral skeletons
Intertidal to deep sea
In sand or mud

10. Exotic habits On living hermit crabs or gastropods
On jellyfish or comb jellies
On living sponges, corals & gorgonians

11. How does habit(at) manifest itself in morphology or biology?
Shape
Musculature
Reproductive biology
Symbionts

12. Shape Burrowing forms tend to be long, slender, smooth
Intertidal forms are often “bumpy” with suckers that hold stones
Deep water forms tend to be thick, stout, with wide oral discs

13. Musculature
Burrowing forms have strong retractor and circular muscles, weak basilar muscles
Intertidal forms have strong marginal sphincters
Attached forms have weak circular and retractor muscles

14. Reproduction
Attached forms in shallow subtidal and in deep sea have free swimming larvae, deep sea forms may have very large larvae
Attached forms undergo longitudinal fission, burrowing forms undergo transverse fission

15. Symbionts
Photosymbionts in attached and burrowing forms in shallow water
Photosymbiotic forms have broad oral disc
Crab symbionts tend to have potent nematocysts

16. How can we interpret and understand this diversity?
 Taxonomy & systematics

17. What is it? Process of identification
Find specimen
Compare multiple specimens
Develop sense of range of variation in color, shape & morphology
Compare to descriptions of similar known species

18. Is it the same? Process of comparison
Color, habitus, biology & life history
Arrangement and morphology of mesenteries & muscles
Size, shape & distribution of nematocysts

19. Why does it matter? Variation in biology and/or role in ecosystem
Repeatability and comparability of results

20. Biodiversity in Oman Components of the tropical Indo-Pacific fauna
New species (possibly endemic)
Lacking representatives of Acontiaria

21. Omani Anemones
A new species of Heteractis?

22. Anthopleura —biogeography and evolution in the intertidal zone
What role do history, geography, or habitat play in
loss or re-acquisition of asexual reproduction?
loss, change, or re-acquisition of photosymbionts?

23. Global Diversity of Edwardsiidae
• Small burrowing anemones
• Poorly known, difficult to collect

24. Known Distribution

25. of the sea anemone family Actinodendridae
Morphology
Variability
Systematics
of the sea anemone family Actinodendridae

26. General - morphology long, highly branched tentacles
secondary branches
primary branch
column
pedal disc
10 mm

27. Morphology - acrospheres
+ simple, pointed
Actinostephanus haeckeli
+ bilobed, narrow
Actinodendron arboreum species complex
+ bilobed, wide
Actinodendron alcyonoideum
+ simple, capitate
Megalactis sp.

28. acrosphere
fired capsule
Stinging capsules

29. General - habitat shallow water on sand on sea grass bed
among rocks and corals
on mud

30. General - distribution
+ tropical
+ Indian and Pacific Ocean and the Red Sea
over 400 records

31. Variability + morphology of tentacles + color and color patterns
+ nematocysts (stinging capsules)
Field research helps to understand variability

32. Variability - morphology
Variant with long: tentacles, branches, acrospheres
Actinodendron arboreum
elongated tentacle
contracted tentacle

33. Variability - morphology
Variant with short: tentacles, branches, acrospheres
Actinodendron arboreum

34. Variability with age + number of branches increases with age
+ acrospheres are longer in juvenile individuals
Actinodendron arboreum
juvenile
adult

35. Variability with behavior
tertiary branch
secondary branch
primary branch

36. Variability - regeneration of tentacles
normal secondary branches
regenerated secondary branches
Actinodendron arboreum

37. Taxonomy - original descriptions versus reality
Actinodendron
alcyonoideum
(Quoy and Gaimard, 1833)
original description vs
specimen from
Fiji, near Dravuni Isl.

38. CORALLIMORPHARIA Ha-Rim Cha
Vincent B. Hargreaves
Adorian Ardelean
George Miller
CORALLIMORPHARIA
Ha-Rim Cha
The Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS, USA

39. Corallimorpharia One of six orders of Zoantharia
Coral-like sea anemones
Solitary or colonial polyps without skeleton
Current Classification: four families, 13 genera, and 50 species
Widely distributed: from tropical to polar areas and from shallow to deep water
Questions in the classification and the phylogenetic relationships
LeRoy (

40. What do they look like? Plate-like body Family Ricordeidae Watzl, 1922
Family Discosomatidae Duchassaing de Fombressin and Michelotti, 1864
(Photos by Vincent B. Hargreaves)

41. What do they look like? Cylindrical body
Family Sideractiidae Danielssen, 1890
Family Corallimorphidae Hertwig, 1882

42. Corallimorpharia from Red Sea
Eilat Reef, Israel
Discosoma unguja
Discosoma nummiforme
Rhodactis rhodostoma
(photos by Baraka Kuguru)

43. Predictive Range Modeling
Discosoma nummiforme
SST_mean_monthly, SST_min_max_range, Salinity_ann_avg, Chlora, Tides