A new species of Sympodium (Octocorallia, Xeniidae) from Miyazaki, Japan.

In this study, a new soft coral species, Sympodium omasum sp. nov. (Malacalcyonacea, Xeniidae), is described from a warm-temperate region in Miyazaki, Japan.

The Trojan seahorse: citizen science pictures of a seahorse harbour insights into the distribution and behaviour of a long-overlooked polychaete worm.

Symbiotic marine invertebrates can be small, hidden or difficult to find, hampering the understanding of their distribution and ecological roles. is a polychaete inhabiting the gorgonian , where it lives in high densities within the host's coenenchyme and occupies burrows formed by host tissue near coral polyps. This study provides the first records of since its description in 1956, from colonies of Anthogorgiidae in southern Japan.

 sp. nov. (Cnidaria, Octocorallia, Alcyonacea), a new soft coral species in the family Xeniidae from Miyazaki, Japan.

A new soft coral species, (Alcyonacea, Xeniidae), is described from Miyazaki in the warm-temperate region of Japan. This new species has conspicuous and unique spindle sclerites in addition to the simple ellipsoid platelet-shaped sclerites typically found in the genus . These unique spindles are a specific key morphological characteristic for this new species and for differentiating this species among congeneric species.

High species diversity of the soft coral family Xeniidae (Octocorallia, Alcyonacea) in the temperate region of Japan revealed by morphological and molecular analyses.

The soft coral family Xeniidae, commonly found in tropical and subtropical regions, consists of 20 genera and 162 species. To date, few studies on this family have been conducted in Japan, especially at higher latitudes. Although molecular phylogenetic analyses have recently been used to distinguish soft coral species, it is difficult to identify species and genera in this family due to the limited taxonomic indices and high morphological variation.