Taxonomy of the ascidians in the Japanese tropical waters

日本热带海鞘动物区系一直知之甚少。虽然动物区系包含许多可用于生物化学、药理学、生态学或胚胎学研究的物种，但标本的具体鉴定往往非常困难。在此期间，我有幸以琉球群岛的珊瑚礁区为主体，通过水下呼吸器（SCUBA）下潜至20米左右，成功地采集到了许多具有良好水下照片的标本，其中许多是日本及其邻近沃茨的新物种，有些是科学上的新物种。研究结果已在项目报告（格式1）中初步显示，其中包括约60种日本热带海鞘的简要描述，其中45种附有本人拍摄的水下彩色照片，以及目、亚目、科和属的检索表，所有这些都是迄今为止在日本沃茨记录的。这份报告一定对对海鞘感兴趣的野外工作者有用。我现在正在准备一些原始论文，以描述科学或日本的新物种。

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.