During the last half of April and first half of May I had the privilege of studying at the Paris Museum of Natural History in their famous underground facility called the Zootheque. There I sorted and identified their stylasterid (calcified hydroids) collection made from off New Caledonia and the northern Norfolk Ridge.
Altogether I was able to sort and identify about 1400 lots of material, which included 103 species and 18 genera. By species this would be over a third of the previously described stylasterid species. Preliminary study of a part of this collection (1100 lots) previously on loan to the NMNH suggests that 63 of these species and 3 of the genera are undescribed. The figure above illustrates 11 of the 103 species, only three of which have names.
Now, one may ask why the fauna of a relatively small island is so important. It turns out that New Caledonia and northern Norfolk Ridge (not the Philippines) is the center of biodiversity of deep-water (and probably shallow water) corals and probably most marine invertebrates for this planet. Thus, an understanding of that fauna is key for understanding the fauna for the entire Indo-West Pacific. Fortunately, the Paris Museum has made 23 expeditions to New Caledonia and adjacent islands amassing an unparalleled collection of all marine taxa from that region. In addition to working on a taxonomic revision of the fauna, I hope to use the collection for DNA sequencing studies and mineralogical studies of the calcium carbonate skeleton.
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