ProTrindade Marine Invertebrate Project

Trindade and Martin Vaz (TMV) is a highly isolated, oceanic volcanic archipelago located approximately 1200 km off the Brazilian coast and about 4200 km away from the nearest African coast. It has been almost 70 years since the first sea star, “Astropecten sp.”, was recorded from Trindade in 1951. In the following years (1955–1971; 2006) six sea star species were added to the archipelago’s fauna. After that period, however, research on shallow water echinoderms has not been conducted in TMV and no further sea star species have been recorded from there since. From 2012 to 2019, 263 day time SCUBA diving and intertidal samplings conducted at TMV yielded 91 lots of sea stars in 7 species: Linckia guildingi Gray, 1840; Oreaster reticulatus (Linnaeus, 1758); Astropecten aff. antillensis Lütken, 1859; Copidaster lymani A. H. Clark, 1948; Luidia alternata alternata (Say, 1825); Mithrodia clavigera (Lamarck, 1816); and Ophidiaster guildingi Gray, 1840. The last five species in this list represent new records to the archipelago, with C. lymani also being the first record of the species in the southwestern Atlantic. Five shallow-water species previously known from TMV have not been observed in the present survey: Asterinides folium (Lütken, 1860), Astropecten brasiliensis Müller & Troschel, 1842, Astropecten cingulatus Sladen, 1883, Linckia nodosa Perrier, 1875, and Ophidiaster alexandri Verrill, 1915. Twelve sea star species are currently known from shallow waters of TMV (Cunha et al. 2020).

This is contribution number 7 of the ProTrindade Marine Invertebrate Project (ProTrindade).