New Coral Family Discovered on Deep Seamounts Off Costa Rica

Scientists have described a newly discovered coral species so different from its relatives that it required a new family to classify it, according to a study published in the open-access journal ZooKeys. Researchers found the coral at depths of about 360 to 529 metres on rocky seamounts near Isla del Coco and along Costa Rica's Pacific margin, collected using the remotely operated vehicle SuBastian during Schmidt Ocean Institute expeditions in 2019 and 2023.

The bright yellow colonies, some more than a metre tall, grew abundantly on rocky outcrops nearly covered by brittle stars, starfish-like relatives with long, thin arms. When researchers sequenced three genes commonly used to classify corals, each gene placed the species in a different, unrelated family, an unusually strong conflict that led the team to use phylogenomics, comparing hundreds of genes at once, to resolve its ancestry. That broader analysis showed the coral belonged to no previously recognized family; although its closest known relatives sit in the family Eunicellidae, its genetics and anatomy justified a new family, Laurinqueidae, and new genus, Laurinque.

The genus name Laurinque comes from "Laurinque," the Quenya word for "golden tree," Quenya being the Elvish language J.R.R. Tolkien created for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, a reference to the coral's colour and tree-like shape. The species name, elenya, means "stellar" in Quenya, referring to the surrounding brittle stars.

"I thought the species could belong to a known family and genera, but after the preliminary morphological analysis I realized that it was something very different," said Dr. Odalisca Breedy of the Universidad de Costa Rica, the study's lead researcher. The expeditions were supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and a National Geographic Society research grant.