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A New Species and New Record of the Soft Coral Genus Lobophytum (Octocorallia: Malacalcyonacea: Sarcophytidae) From the Andaman Islands, India

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Abstract

A new species of soft coral, Lobophytum andamanensis sp. nov., is described and illustrated, along with a specimen of Lobophytum patulum Tixier-Durivault, 1956, which is reported herein as a new record for India. The type locality of Lobophytum patulum is Diego Suarez bay in Madagascar, and it was later from recorded from the Seychelles, Kenya, Mauritius, and the Indian Ocean coast of South African. Both these species are recorded from the North Andaman group of Islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Director, Zoological Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change, Government of India for providing facilities. Also, thanks to the Forest departments of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for providing logistics support during the surveys.

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  1. Zoological Survey of India, M-Block, New Alipore, Kolkata, 700 053, West Bengal, India

    Seepana Rajendra & Chelladurai Raghunathan

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  1. Seepana Rajendra
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  2. Chelladurai Raghunathan
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Contributions

SR: Field survey, concept, data documentation, analysis and taxonomy, literature review and writing- original draft; CR: Conceptualization, supervision, writing- review and editing.

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Correspondence to Seepana Rajendra.

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Rajendra, S., Raghunathan, C. A New Species and New Record of the Soft Coral Genus Lobophytum (Octocorallia: Malacalcyonacea: Sarcophytidae) From the Andaman Islands, India. Thalassas (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41208-024-00669-3

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