427 Relict Siderastrea savignyana (Scleractinia: Siderastreidae) in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve, Kenya David Obura 1 , Yao-Yang Chuang 2,3 , Mike Olendo 4 , Nassir Amiyo 5 , Julie Church 6 , and Chaolun Allen Chen 2,3, * 1 Coastal Ocean Research and Development Indian Ocean (CORDIO), PO Box 10135, Mombasa, Kenya 2 Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taipei 115, Taiwan 3 Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan 4 WWF Eastern African Regional Programme Office, PO Box 99, Lamu, Kenya 5 Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), PO Box 82144, Mombasa, Kenya 6 Kibodo Trust, PO Box 15551, Nairobi, Kenya (Accepted May 14, 2007) Siderastrea savignyana (Scleractinia: Siderastreidae) is the only species of genus Siderastrea assumed to be distributed across the entire Indo-West Pacific (Veron 2000). However, its validity as a species remains highly equivocal. In the course of efforts to estab- lish the biogeographic distribution and phylogenetic validity of S. savignyana, we discovered 2 small populations in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve (KMNR; 1 ° 49.730'S, 41 ° 26.685'E), northern Kenya. Both populations are located on sheltered shallow patch reefs in channels leading into extensive mangrove systems, and at 0-3 m depth at mean low water. The colony size varied from < 10 cm mounds to large healthy, massive, micro-atoll colonies of up to 2 m in diameter (Fig. 1). Some colonies showed partial mortality with multiple fis- sion products scattered over the surface of the original colony skeleton and separated by bare skeleton, turf algae, or crus- tose coralline algae (Fig. 2). The gross morphology and coral- lite structures (Fig. 2) of S. savignyana in the KMNR strongly resemble those of S. radians and greatly differ from those of S. savignyana in the Pacific (Chuang 2006), suggesting a phylo- genetic affinity between S. savignyana in the KMNR and the Atlantic Siderastrea species. The former might represent a relict population on the East African coast after the closure of the Tethys Sea during the Miocene that separated the Atlantic and Indian Ocean provinces. This provides a framework for investigating their evolutionary history using molecular phylogenetic approaches. http://zoolstud.sinica.edu.tw/Journals/46.4/427.pdf Acknowledgments: Many thanks are given to the staff of the Kiunga National Marine Reserve, Kenya for their logistic support. Funding was supported by Sida/SAREC and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association to CORDIO and an Academia Sinica Thematic Pilot Grant (2007-2008) to C.A.C. References Chuang YY. 2006. Mitogenomics and molecular evolution of the group I intron in the cytochrome oxidase I gene of Siderastrea (Cnidaria; Scleractinia; Siderastreidae). Master , s thesis, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 61 pp. Veron JEN. 2000. Corals of the world. Townsville, Australia: Australian Institute of Marine Science. Fig. 1. Siderastrea savignyana microatoll measuring 2 m in diameter in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve (KMNR), Kenya. Fig. 2. Close-up of Siderastrea savignyana corallite detail and turf algae. Animal Miraculum *To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed. Chaolun Allen Chen, Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taipei 115, Taiwan. E-mail:cac@gate.sinica.edu.tw