Volume 24, Issue 73, January - June, 2023

Morphotaxonomy of shallow water Comanthus wahlbergii (Müller, 1843) (Echinodermata: Crinoidea: Comasteridae) collected from Jiwani (Makran coast, Pakistan)

Farhana S Ghory^1♦, Qaseem Tahera¹, Patricio R De Los Ríos-Escalante^2,3

¹Marine Reference Collection and Resource Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan
²Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Químicas, Facultad de Recursos Naturales, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Casilla (PO-Box) 15-D, Temuco, Chile
³Núcleo de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Temuco, Chile

^♦Corresponding author
Marine Reference Collection and Resource Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Crinoidea is the class of marine animals composed of crinoids, which comprises the feather-stars or sea-lilies. Vast arrays of living and extinct species are found in shallow water to great depths in this most primitive of living classes of Echinodermata (Pandian, 2018). Many species of stalked crinoids live in deep seas and a few are sessile, which are exhibited on rocky beaches. There are a variety of colors, from the most vibrant animals to the pale or colorless. Only the genus Comanthus A.H.Clark, 1908 is found in Pakistani waters. Presently we described the taxonomy of shallow-water Comanthus wahlbergii (Müller, 1843) that were collected from Jiwani (Pakistan) (25°03’06’’N 61°44’35’’E).

Keywords: Comanthus wahlbergii, shallow water, feather stars, Jiwani (Makran coast, Pakistan).

Species, 2023, 24(73), e51s1545

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.54905/disssi/v24i73/e51s1545

Published: 15 June 2023