Twenty-eight species of hydroids are now known from Japanese tsunami marine debris (JTMD) sent to sea in March 2011 from the Island of Honshu and landing between 2012 and 2016 in North America and Hawai‘i. To 12 JTMD hydroid species previously reported, we add an additional 16 species. Fourteen species (50%) were detected only once; given the small fraction of debris sampled, this suggests that the diversity of the total arriving hydroid fauna was likely larger. Our ongoing studies provide the first documentation of these species being rafted from one continental margin to another. Plumalecium plumularioides (Clark, 1877) is newly reported for the Japanese hydroid fauna. Fourteen species (52%), held to be either naturally amphi-Pacific or possibly introduced by ships at some earlier date, were already known from the Pacific coast of North America. We suggest that Obelia griffin Calkins, 1899, as represented in the JTMD fauna, may be a North Pacific oceanic neustonic species. We propose that Hydrodendron mirabile (Hincks, 1866) and its congeners be included in the family Phylactothecidae Stechow, 1921, here emended. we establish a new family, Plumaleciidae Choong and Calder, 2018, to accommodate the genus Plumalecium Antsulevich, 1982. |
