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ABSTRACT
Colonial ascidians collected from wharf piles and natural substrata from Bluff Harbour and Stewart Island in the South Island of New Zealand are described in this paper. Two species, Lissoclinum violaceum sp. nov. and Didemnum marineae sp. nov. are new to science and described for the first time. The ascidian fauna in this region is a mixed assemblage of southern species, species with a New Zealand-wide distribution, and two species with trans-Tasman affinities.
www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:37DC0D4B-8FB9-4F1D-A5A0-E9CAB3203447
Acknowledgements
I would expressly like to acknowledge Vicky Webb for encouraging me to collect ascidians during NIWA’s Biotechnology programme. Many thanks to Michelle Kelly for her help and patience in the preparation of this manuscript, and to Dennis Gordon for reviewing this paper. Thanks to Louis Olsen for helping with map production, and to countless NIWA divers for putting up with many slippery samples. Collections in Port Pegasus were made by Debbie Freeman, The Department of Conservation. Many additional samples were collected on NIWA biosecurity surveillance of Bluff Harbour. I acknowledge the funding of these collections by the Ministry of Primary Industry (MPI). Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for helping to improve this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.