Macrosymbionts of starfish Echinaster luzonicus (Gray, 1840) in the waters of a volcanic western Pacific island

Li-Chun Tseng; Parinya Limviriyakul; Jiang-Shiou Hwang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278288

Macrosymbionts of starfish Echinaster luzonicus (Gray, 1840) in the waters of a volcanic western Pacific island

PLoS One. 2022 Nov 30;17(11):e0278288. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278288. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Li-Chun Tseng¹, Parinya Limviriyakul², Jiang-Shiou Hwang^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Marine Biology, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan.
² Faculty of Fisheries, Department of Marine Science, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand.
³ Center of Excellence for Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan.
⁴ Center of Excellence for the Oceans, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan.

Abstract

During an investigation program of faunal diversity in the shallow reef zone of the active volcanic island off northeastern Taiwan in July and September 2020, numerous individuals of the starfish Echinaster luzonicus (Gray, 1840) were found, and some individuals were found with associated symbionts. Starfish sampling in the 150-m coral reef zone was undertaken at a depth of 8 m through scuba diving. For each type of potential macrosymbiont, both the dorsal and ventral sides were carefully examined. The prevalence of macrosymbionts on the starfish E. luzonicus was recorded. The most common symbiotic organism on E. luzonicus was the ectoparasitic snail Melanella martinii (A. Adams in Sowerby, 1854), followed by the pontoniine shrimp Zenopontonia soror (Nobili, 1904) and the rare polychaete scaleworm Asterophilia carlae Hanley, 1989. The prevalence ratio with host E. luzonicus was low and varied by 8.62% and 4.35%, 6.03% and 0%, and 0.86% and 0.72% in July and September 2020 for M. martinii, Z. soror, and A. carlae, respectively. The present study is the first to discover the scaleworm A. carlae as a macrosymbiont of the tropical starfish E. luzonicus, with a widespread distribution, off Taiwan's northeastern coast, an area influenced by the Kuroshio Current.

Copyright: © 2022 Tseng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Coral Reefs
Diving*
Pacific Islands
Seafood
Starfish*

Grants and funding

Financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan through grant no. MOST 108-2811-M-019-504, MOST 109-2811-M-019-504 and MOST 110-2811-M-019-504 to L.-C. Tseng, as well as grant no. MOST 106-2621-M-019-001, MOST 107-2621-M-019-001, MOST 108-2621-M-019-003, MOST 109-2621-M-019-002, MOST 110-2621-M-019-001 and MOST 111-2621-M-019-001, and Center of Excellence for Ocean Engineering (Grant No. 109J13801-51 110J13801-51, 111J13801-51) to J.-S. Hwang. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.