Family Asteronychidae

Final 581 bp partial COI and 443 bp partial 16S sequences were obtained after removing ambiguous aligned sites and successfully used in reconstructing a Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree from 16S (8 specimens) and COI (7 specimens), respectively (Fig. 43). In the 16S ML tree, species of Asteronyx were divided into two subclades (Sub-Clades 01 and 02). Sub-Clade 01 consists of A. loveni (Japan, East China Sea and South China Sea) and A. longifissus Döderlein, 1927 (California) . Sub-Clade 02 consists of A. reticulata (East China Sea and Japan) and A. luzonicus (South China Sea) (Fig. 43A). Similar results were found in the COI ML tree (Fig. 43B). Genetic distance values are provided in Suppl. file 1 and Suppl. file 2. Two samples of A. reticulata from Japan and the East China Sea had identical sequences and three samples of A. loveni from Japan, the East China Sea and the South China Sea also showed no sequence variation (Suppl. file 1).