Vol. 110 - Part III - Zoological Survey of India

Rec. zool. Surv. India : 110(Part–3) : 77-92, 2010NEW RECORDS OF SCLERACTINIANS FROM ANDAMAN ISLANDS.RAJKUMAR RAJAN 1 , R. RAGHURAMAN 2 AND CH. SATYANARAYANA 21Zoological Survey of India, Marine Biology Regional Centre, Chennai-600 028, India2Zoological Survey of India, Andaman Nicobar Regional Centre. Port Blair,U. T. of Andaman Nicobar Islands, 744 102, India. Email: rajkumar_rajan@rediffmail.com2Zoological Survey of India, FPS Building, Kolkata-700 017INTRODUCTIONAndaman Nicobar Islands located between 6°-14°N and 91°-94° E, hosts fringing reefs encircling almostthe entire coast. These reefs being touted as the lessimpacted, and could serve as reserves of Biodiversityin the Indian Ocean are the least investigated of theIndian Ocean, concerning Biodiversity. Onzooxanthellate scleractinians, there have been very fewextensive surveys, is apparent in the description of sofar 177 species of hard corals under 57 genera, which isa mere 22.29% of the total reported species from theWorld. There was an international initiative, from UNDP-GEF, to confirm the global significance of biodiversityof the Andaman region. The report of which indicateda possible occurrence of 400 species of corals (Turneret al. 2001). The new records [111 Nos, later verified tobe 94 Nos, which includes some non-scleractinians aswell (Venkataraman et al. 2003)] of this study, however,have not been described. In spite of many organizationsnow working on coral reefs in India, no significantstrides in taxonomic investigations of corals have beenmade since the last compilation by Pillai (1983).Venkataraman et al. (2003) were one exception : 42species were added to the list of coral of the AndamanNicobar islands and 13 to the Laskhadweep islands inthe Arabian Sea—though, for the whole of Indian reefsthe addition was a meager 9 Nos, since Pillai (1983).Raghuram & Venkataraman (2005) added two morespecies from Gulf of Mannar and Andaman waters.Extensive surveys have been carried out since 2004by the first author of this paper in South Andamanreefs for assessment scleractinian diversity in thesereefs and changes with regard to climatic and localimpacts; The list of new records the UNDP-GEF (Turneret al. 2001). report too needed to be verified for theiroccurrence or non-occurrence demanding descriptionthrough taxonomic investigation of specimens. Thepresent paper is the outcome of this effort. 7 newrecords to Andaman Nicobar waters are described,which include 4 species from the list of new records inthe UNDP-GEF report (Turner et al. 2001). With theexception of one species which has previous recordsfrom Gulf of Mannar, all the described species are newrecords to Indian waters.It may be noted that this is the first clear cut recordof these species with descriptions of specimens fromIndian waters. Earlier listings (other than Turner et al.,2001) if available were ambiguous without the specimendescriptions, as the species described in this paper havecloser affinities with many species and have manyrelated species which makes their in-situ identification(definite) nearly impossible, and hence called fordetailed taxonomic study of the specimens.MATERIALS AND METHODSStudy area and sampling locations are shown in themap (Fig. I. a & b). Corals have been photographed insituwith Sony cyber shot camera with underwaterhousing, and were tried to be identified at the firstinstance. Later, species which required detailedobservations of skeletal structures were sampled,without causing un-due damage to the colony. SCUBAwas employed for the observation and collection. Thespecimens were labeled and stored in freshwater for