Rhombonemertes rublinea, Hookabe & Moritaki & Jimi & Ueshima, 2022

Hookabe, Natsumi, Moritaki, Takeya, Jimi, Naoto & Ueshima, Rei, 2022, A new oerstediid discovered from wood falls in the Sea of Kumano, Japan: Description of Rhombonemertes rublinea gen. et sp. nov. (Nemertea: Eumonostilifera), Zoologischer Anzeiger 301, pp. 154-162 : 160

4.2. Ecological notes of R. rublinea gen. et sp. nov.

Sunken wood has been increasingly recognized as important oases in the deep-sea environment, providing organic resources, shelter, and substrata ( Turner 1977; Wolff 1979; Bernardino et al., 2010; Bienhold et al., 2013) for various marine invertebrates recently discovered (e.g., Hasegawa 1997; Sigwart & Sirenko 2012; Magalh˜aes et al., 2017; Barroso et al., 2018; Voight et al., 2019; Ariyama & Moritaki 2020). Nemerteans were also reported from wood falls or experimental wood deployments in previous ecological studies; in most cases, however, they were listed as Nemertea sp. ( Judge & Barry 2016; Amon et al., 2017; Saeedi et al., 2019). Thus, species diversity of nemerteans associated with organic falls or prey invertebrates such as annelids and amphipods predominantly occurred there is not well understood. Current knowledge and data are not enough to tell us whether R. rublinea sp. nov. actually prefers sunken wood pieces or porous hard structures because their colonization preference is not well investigated in the present study (e.g., ecological comparisons of specimen occurrence rates between bottom sediments and sunken woods). If some deep-water inhabiting nemerteans prefer cryptic environments as do shallow-water species, the species diversity may become even clearer by focusing on structures that sink on the sea floor.