气候变化领域集成服务门户

Floating maritime objects torn from their anchorage by the March 2011 Tohoku tsunami transported Japanese near-shore biota to the Pacific coast of North America and the Hawaiian Islands. This Japanese tsunami marine debris (JTMD) biota included five species of chitons: Mopalia seta Jakovleva, 1952, Placiphorella stimpsoni (Gould, 1859), Acanthochitona achates (Gould, 1859), Acanthochitona rubrolineata (Lischke, 1873), and an undescribed species with close affinities to Acanthochitona defilippii (Tapparone-Canefri, 1874), here referred to as Acanthochitona sp. A. The last of these was the most common chiton on the tsunami debris. Our identifications are supported by morphological characters and analyses of mitochondrial 16S and COI gene sequences from the retrieved specimens, supplemented by new samples of North West Pacific specimens. A. rubrolineata, a former synonym of A. achates, is here revived as a valid species; it is, surprisingly, weakly supported as having close affinities to an Hawaiian endemic chiton, A. viridis (Pease, 1872).