Meeting Abstract
Botryllids are colonial styelid ascidians renowned for their advanced allorecognition and regenerative capabilities. These traits show intriguing patterns across clades and species. However, much of what is understood about their reproductive behavior and distribution in benthic and fouling communities is based on what is known from invasive botryllids. Here, we take advantage of a substantial natural assemblage of ascidians from the Verde Island Passage of the Philippines, named the center of the center of marine biodiversity in the Coral Triangle. We found high botryllid diversity in a relatively small area (1100 km2) , when compared to lower diversity in much larger global sampling efforts to date. Our data shows 11 novel mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 haplotypes in just 14 samples, with the remarkable discovery of 4 new clades in this small number of samples. Further, of the currently characterized globally invasive species of botryllids, none have yet to be detected in this highly biodiverse ecosystem. This project is a first step towards characterizing botryllid diversity and leading towards linking molecular data with historic species descriptions based on morphological features.
