Expanded sampling of New Zealand glass sponges (Porifera: Hexactinellida) provides new insights into biodiversity, chemodiversity, and phylogeny of the class

Martin Dohrmann; Henry M Reiswig; Michelle Kelly; Sadie Mills; Simone Schätzle; Miriam Reverter; Natascha Niesse; Sven Rohde; Peter Schupp; Gert Wörheide

doi:10.7717/peerj.15017

Expanded sampling of New Zealand glass sponges (Porifera: Hexactinellida) provides new insights into biodiversity, chemodiversity, and phylogeny of the class

PeerJ. 2023 Apr 27:11:e15017. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15017. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Martin Dohrmann¹, Henry M Reiswig², Michelle Kelly³, Sadie Mills⁴, Simone Schätzle¹, Miriam Reverter⁵, Natascha Niesse⁶, Sven Rohde⁶, Peter Schupp^{6

7}, Gert Wörheide^{1

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology & Geobiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
² Biology Department, Natural History Section, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
³ Coasts and Oceans National Centre, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁴ Invertebrate Collection, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, Wellington, New Zealand.
⁵ School of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom.
⁶ Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
⁷ Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.
⁸ Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns (SNSB), Munich, Germany.
⁹ GeoBio-CenterLMU, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.

Abstract

Glass sponges (Hexactinellida) constitute important parts of ecosystems on the deep-sea floor worldwide. However, they are still an understudied group in terms of their diversity and systematics. Here, we report on new specimens collected during RV Sonne expedition SO254 to the New Zealand region, which has recently emerged as a biodiversity hotspot for hexactinellids. Examination of the material revealed several species new to science or so far unknown from this area. While formal taxonomic descriptions of a fraction of these were published earlier, we here briefly report on the morphology of the remaining new species and use the collection to greatly expand the molecular phylogeny of the group as established with ribosomal DNA and cytochrome oxidase subunit I markers. In addition, we provide a chemical fingerprinting analysis on a subset of the specimens to investigate if the metabolome of glass sponges contains phylogenetic signal that could be used to supplement morphological and DNA-based approaches.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Chemical fingerprinting; Glass sponges; Metabolome; Molecular phylogenetics; New Zealand.

Publication types

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

MeSH terms

Animals
Biodiversity
Ecosystem*
New Zealand
Phylogeny
Porifera* / genetics

Grants and funding

Peter Schupp received funding for voyage SO254, Project PoribacNewZ, grant number 03G0254A, by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). NIWA voyage participation was funded through Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment Strategic Science Investment Fund (MBIE SSIF) ‘Enhancing Collections’ project. Henry M. Reiswig’s initial work for this study was made possible by financial support from the University of Victoria and the Royal British Columbia Museum. The molecular work of this study was financed through funds to Gert Wörheide from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich’s Institutional Strategy LMUexcellent within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative. Michelle Kelly received funding from the NIWA under Coasts and Oceans Research Programme 2 Marine Biological Resources: discovery and definition of the marine biota of New Zealand (2017/2018 and 2018/2019 SCIs as well as 2020/2021 SCI for taxonomic research). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.