Living benthic foraminifera from cold-water coral ecosystems in the eastern Alboran Sea, Western Mediterranean.

Benthic foraminifera (protists with biomineralized tests) coupled with geochemical proxies are used for the first time to characterize present oceanographic conditions occurring in cold-water coral ecosystems (CWC) in the eastern Alboran Sea (Brittlestar Ridge and Cablier Mound), western Mediterranean Sea. Quantitative data on living (stained) benthic foraminifera from 5 box cores retrieved during the MD194 cruise on the RV Marion Dufresne reveal that these organisms are more diverse in presence of corals, where more numerous ecological niches occur than they are in pelagic adjacent sediments. These data confirm that CWC can be considered as "diversity hotspots" also for benthic foraminifera.

Cribrilinids (Bryozoa, Cheilostomata) associated with deep-water coral habitats at the Great Bahama Bank slope (NW Atlantic), with description of new taxa.

Four cribrilinid bryozoans associated with deep-water corals (578-682 m depth) from the Great Bahama Bank slope, are described, two of them are new. The generic allocation of some species prompted us to raise the subgenera Puellina, Cribrilaria, and Glabrilaria to genus rank. The new combination Cribrilaria saginata (Winston, 2005) n.

Merging scleractinian genera: the overwhelming genetic similarity between solitary Desmophyllum and colonial Lophelia.

Background: In recent years, several types of molecular markers and new microscale skeletal characters have shown potential as powerful tools for phylogenetic reconstructions and higher-level taxonomy of scleractinian corals. Nonetheless, discrimination of closely related taxa is still highly controversial in scleractinian coral research. Here we used newly sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes and 30 microsatellites to define the genetic divergence between two closely related azooxanthellate taxa of the family Caryophylliidae: solitary Desmophyllum dianthus and colonial Lophelia pertusa.