New occurrences of the nonindigenous orange cup corals

The genus Tubastraea Lesson, 1829 (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae), with natural occurrence in the Pacific Ocean, was reported for the first time in Brazil by Castro and Pires (2001) at the Campos Basin (offshore Brazilian Basin), north of Rio de Janeiro State, established in oil platforms (De Paula and Creed 2004), and since then it has also been reported on the coast of the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina (De Paula and Creed 2005; Neves et al. 2006; Creed et al. 2008; Junqueira et al. 2009; Mantelatto et al. 2011; Silva and Barros 2011). It is now believed that these corals come to Brazilian waters fixed on oil platform structures and/or on large ship hulls (De Paula and Creed 2004). The ahermatypic orange cup coral Tubastraea has an early reproductive age, where maturity is reached in about a year and a half (Fenner and Banks 2004). This feature, associated with the fact that it has an average growth of 3.02 cm2/year (Vermeij 2005), a wide tolerance to variation in temperature, desiccation, and depth (De Paula and Creed 2005), and a great ecological tolerance body, explains its success as an efficient colonizer of new habitats (Vermeij 2005). The impact of exotic species, such as those of the genus Tubastraea, in remote areas has become a major threat, particularly to the reef environments, because the introduction of invasive species can be significantly deleterious to the integrity of the global marine biodiversity (Vitousek et al. 1997; Ferreira 2003; Sartoretto et al. 2008). This paper describes, for the first time, the occurrence of the orange cup corals Tubastraea tagusensis, and T. coccinea in the northeastern coast of Brazil, and also describes the possible interactions among these coral species with endemic and endangered corals and reef fishes and the predation of the orange cup corals by the bearded worm Hermodice carunculata (Pallas, 1766) Abstract: The genus Tubastraea, with natural occurrence in the Pacific Ocean, was reported for the first time in Brazil along the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Since then it has also been reported in other sites along the south and southeast Brazilian coasts in oil platforms and rocky shores. We describe for the first time the occurrence of Tubastraea tagusensis and T. coccinea in the Northeastern coast of Brazil. The corals were found in the state of Bahia, sitting on shipwrecks, marina jetties as well as occupying space on a coral reef. 1 Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Unidade de Ensino de Penedo, Av. Beira Rio s/n°, Centro Histórico. CEP 57200-000. Penedo, AL, Brazil. 2 Organização Sócio Ambientalista (Pró-Mar), Sede Mar Grande, Av. Beira Mar 13, Ilhota. CEP 44470-000. Vera Cruz, BA, Brazil. 3 Centro de Pesquisas e Conservação dos Ecossistemas Aquáticos (Biota Aquática). Av. Euclydes da Cunha, 476/4B, Graça. CEP 40150-122. Salvador, BA, Brazil. 4 Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Biomonitoramento, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Rua Barão de Jeremoabo. CEP 40170-029. Salvador, BA, Brazil. * Corresponding author. E-mail: buiabahia@gmail.com Cláudio L. S. Sampaio1*, Ricardo J. Miranda2, Rodrigo Maia-Nogueira3 and José de Anchieta C.C. Nunes2,4 New occurrences of the nonindigenous orange cup corals Tubastraea coccinea and T. tagusensis (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) in Southwestern Atlantic

New occurrences of the nonindigenous orange cup corals Tubastraea coccinea and T. tagusensis (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) in Southwestern Atlantic (Polychaeta, Amphinomidae).This new record of the genus Tubastraea expands its range by more than 2.000 km along the Brazilian coast.
Material was collected by SCUBA divers.Samples of adult colonies of the sun corals were removed from the substrate at the base with a hammer and chisel.All marine species associated with the collected coral colonies were identified visually with the aid of photographs and identification guides (Hetzel and Castro 1994;Humann and Deloach 2002;Sampaio and Nottingham 2008) and recorded on PVC plates.
The classification of the species Tubastraea tagusensis and T. coccinea (Figures 2a-b) was done in the laboratory and the voucher specimens were deposited in the Cnidaria Collection of the Museu de Zoologia from Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA).The recorded coral specimens were found at depths ranging between 0.5 and 22 m, being mostly located inside the wreckage, sheltered from direct sunlight and in areas with high hydrodynamics.These records agree with data available in the literature, except for the occurrence in the waters of Rio de Janeiro (De Paula and Creed 2004).These species seem to prefer shallow waters, avoiding low temperatures.
These associated fauna are the following: in the Cavo Artemidi shipwreck we recorded three morphotypes of ascidians, four of Porifera (Chondrillidae, Tethyidae and two Geodiidae), the Bryozoa Membraniporidae, the

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Brazilian endemic coral Mussismilia hispida, Verrill 1868, and three unidentified species of Cnidaria (Plumulariidae).All were located in areas around the colonies of the orange cup corals, with distances smaller than 50 cm, may probably competing for space with the corals.In the Marina Itaparica we recorded colonies of the octocoral Carijoa riisei (Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860) in contact with Tubastraea, but we did not see any death signs on any of the species, different from that observed by Creed (2006) During one of our dives in the Cavo Artemidi shipwreck, we observed predation of three polyps of Tubastraea tagusensis by a single bearded fireworm Hermodice carunculata (Pallas, 1766) (Amphinomidae), which was seen engulfing the complete polyps of a colony of T. tagusensis (Figure 4).To date, this bristleworm (Hermodice carunculata) is the only known predator of Tubastraea in the Atlantic.It was recently recorded in the Cape Verde Islands (Wirtz and Debelius 2003).Hermodice carunculata is a common inhabitant of Brazilian reefs being a voracious predator that feeds on soft and hard corals, zoanthids, anemones, hydrocorals and dead fishes (Souza et al. 2007;Authors pers.obs.).
The presence of Tubastraea on coral reefs has not been previously reported in Brazil.In the Cascos reef these orange cup corals are dwelling with a low diverse coral fauna (Figura 5).During our investigation only five species of corals were registered: Montastrea cavernosa (Lyman 1859), Siderastrea sp.Blainville, 1830, Madracis decactis

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Lyman, 1859 and the endemic species Favia lepthophylla, Verrill, 1868 and Mussismilia hispida.All corals together cover approximately 20% of the reef substrate (R.J. Miranda, pers.obs.).Wood (1983) notes that Tubastraea species are generally absent from areas where other corals are abundant.
The TSB is the second largest bay in Brazil (Cirano and Lessa 2007) with a rich and endemic coral fauna (Castro and Pires 2001;Cruz et al. 2009), and is an area where there is an intense shipping traffic for crude oil transport, ore and many kinds of commodities to six different terminals and some hundred small fishing ports.The introduction of the orange cup corals into the bay waters may have occurred because of these ships or by the oil platforms which often enter TSB, and this may probably have favored the rapid increase in the distribution range of the coral infestation.
This new occurrence of Tubastraea in Brazilian waters increases its geographic distribution in the South Atlantic Ocean, and also confirms the great potential threat of the orange cup coral invasion to the coral reefs of Brazil.It urges the need to implant a coral reef monitoring program in the TSB, a significant site of coral reefs in the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean (Cruz et al. 2009).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The orange cup corals: Tubastraea tagusensis (A) and T. coccinea (B) in the tropical coast of Brazil.Photos: C. L. S. Sampaio.