David J.W. Lane, Indra B. Vimono & Iffah Iesa

Abstract. During a joint Indonesia-Singapore South Java Deep-Sea Biodiversity Expedition (SJADES 2018), surveying the benthic biodiversity of the slopes of the Sunda Trough in the Indian Ocean and the Sunda Strait, a large number of Caymanostella seastars (114) were recovered on wood fall material in beam trawl hauls at depths ranging from 312–1,068m. Based on morphological criteria these specimens are herein described as a new taxon, Caymanostella javaensis, new species, only the second member of the genus reported from the Indian Ocean. C. javaensis differs from its nearest congener C. madagascariensis in several respects anatomically but shares with it a peripheral fringe of clawed ambital spinelets that may be adaptive in anchoring to substrata. Molecular evaluation and comparison of the present material awaits the availability of molecular sequences for neighboring species. Abundant and predictable input of wood fall material to a deep-sea environment close to forested land represents a biodiversity hotspot of organic material that may be replicated throughout Indonesia, thus the potential for discovery of new records and taxa of caymanostellids and other fauna on sunken wood in the many deep-sea locations of the Indonesian Archipelago is considered to be high.

Key words. Caymanostellidae, Sunda Trough, Indian Ocean, SJADES 2018

Read article here: RBZ-2026-0048