Henricia specimen was collected from the East Sea of Korea using fishing nets. The specimen was identified as Henricia hayashii (Djakonov 1961), belonging to the family Echinasteridae of the order Spinulosida. This species can be distinguished from other Henricia species by slender arms (R/r=7.4), constricted arm base, six to thirtyfive slender spinelets, open-meshed, reticulated abactinal skeleton comprising semitriangular, rod-like form, and small ossicles present inside the papular areas. This species superficially resembles H. reniossa in terms of its body size but differs in the shape and arrangement of the abactinal and actinal plates. To date, two genera of Echinasteridae, Aleutihenricia and Henricia, including a total of 14 species, have been reported in Korea. Herein, the morphological characteristics of H. hayashii are described, and photographs are provided.
A single postlarva (9.72 mm in standard length) specimen of Crossorhombus azureus (Alcock, 1889) belonging to the family Bothidae, was collected using a bongo net from the southern sea of Korea on December 10, 2019. This species is characterized by having spines on post basipterygial processes. It has two eyes located at the opposite side in head, which accordingly belongs to pre-metamorphosis stage. Melanophores are distributed on the dorsal and anal fin base on the right side (blind side), which is regarded as a useful identification key distinguishing C. azureus from congeneric species in their postlarval stage. A molecular analysis based on mitochondrial DNA COI sequences showed that our specimen was closely matched to adult C. azureus (K2P distance = 0.017). As there is no Korean name for the genus Crossorhombus in spite of presence of Crossorhombus kobensis and its Korean name “Go-be-dung-geul-neob-chi” in Korea, we proposed a new Korean name “Dung-geul-neob-chi-sog” for the genus Crossorhombus and “Pa-lang-dung-geul-neob-chi” for the species C. azureus.
Unarmored dinoflagellates, in the family Kareniaceae, include harmful or toxic bloom-forming species, which are associated with massive fish kills and mortalities of marine organisms worldwide. The occurrence and distribution of the toxigenic species in the family Kareniaceae were investigated in the brackish and coastal waters of Korea between July 2018 and October 2020. During the survey, we collected seven newly recorded species; Karenia papilionacea, Karlodinium digitatum, Karl. veneficum, Karl. zhouanum, Takayama acrotrocha, T. helix, and T. tasmanica. A total of fifteen strains of the seven taxa were successfully established as clonal cultures and examined using LM, SEM, and molecular phylogeny inferred from LSU rDNA sequences. Herein, we present the taxonomic information, morphological features, and molecular phylogenetic positions of the unrecorded dinoflagellate species collected from Korean coastal waters.