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| Pectinodonta nautilus Giribet, Trimble, Rodríguez-Flores & Lord, 2025 |
ABSTRACT
The deep ocean, the largest ecosystem in our planet, is home to a large number of undiscovered animal species. Many of these animals inhabit wood- or whale-falls, ephemerous resources that provide nutrients and energy for the formation of temporary ecosystems. Representative of this habitat and lifestyle are deep-sea limpets in the genus Pectinodonta which are exclusively associated to wood falls. Here, we describe Pectinodonta nautilus sp. nov. from a wood fall off Johnston Atoll, in the Central Pacific Ocean, from a depth of 2,379 m. We use genome skimming and standard Sanger sequencing to assemble complete mitochondrial genomes and to assemble a data set for the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, in order to compare the new species with other known sequences in the superfamily Lottioidea and existing sequences of Pectinodontidae. Our species has a conserved gene order and forms a clade with an undescribed species from the South China Sea and and a species from New Zealand, with which it shares similar radular morphology. This new species extends the distribution range of the genus to the Central Pacific Ocean, previously known mostly from the West Pacific Ocean and from one locality in the East Pacific.
KEYWORDS: Gastropoda, al fauna, deep-sea fauna, genome skimming, mitochondrial genomes, COI barcoding, micro-CT
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| External morphology of Pectinodonta nautilus's shell from various angles. |
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| Pectinodonta nautilus External anatomy (A, B) and digital section to visualize internal anatomy (C, D) |
Gonzalo Giribet, Jennifer Winifred Trimble, Paula Rodríguez-Flores and Arianna Lord. 2025. A New Deep-sea Pectinodonta Species (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Patellogastropoda, Pectinodontidae) from a wood fall near Johnston Atoll, Central Pacific. Molluscan Research. DOI: doi.org/10.1080/13235818.2025.2578245 [05 Nov 2025]
