Taxonomy of the ascidians in the Japanese tropical waters

日本热带海鞘动物一直鲜为人知。尽管该动物群包含许多可用于生化、药理学、生态学或胚胎学研究的物种，但对标本的具体鉴定往往非常困难。因此，我被敦促改善这种情况，以更好地了解动物。在项目期间，幸运的是，我通过潜水到大约20米深的地方，成功地获得了大量具有良好水下照片的标本，主要来自琉球群岛的珊瑚礁阿拉斯；许多物种被证明是日本及其附近水域的新物种，有些是科学上的新物种。研究结果暂载于项目报告(格式1)，其中包括约60种日本热带海鞘的概要描述，其中45种附有本人拍摄的水下彩色照片，以及迄今为止在日本水域记录的目、亚目、科和属的检索表。这份报告对对海鞘感兴趣的野外工作者一定很有用。我现在正在准备一些原创论文来描述这种对科学或日本来说都是新物种。

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.