Taxonomy of the ascidians in the Japanese tropical waters

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Japanese tropical ascidian fauna has been poorly known. Although the fauna contains many species available for biochemical, pharmacological, ecological or embryological studies, specific identification of the specimens is often very hard. Thus, I was urged to improve such circumstances toward the better understanding of the fauna.During the project, I fortunately succeeded in getting numerous specimens with good underwater photos mainly from coral reef aras of the Ryukyu Archipelago, by SCUBA divings down to some 20 m deep ; many species are proved new to Japanese and its adjacent waters, and some are new to science. The results are provisionally shown in the project report(format 1), consisting of the summarized description of about 60 species of Japanese tropical ascidians, 45 of which are accompanied with underwater color photos taken by myself, together with keys to orders, suborders, families and genera, all so far recorded from the Japanese waters. This report must be useful for field workers interested in the ascidians. I am now preparing some original papers to describe the species new to science or to Japan.