Four New Records of Astropecten Seastar (Asteroidea: Astropectinidae) from Brunei

Abstract

Establishing definitive regional species records is crucial to understand how marine faunas change under anthropogenic stresses. Other than reef corals, the marine invertebrate species diversity of Brunei Darussalam and in fact the entire Palawan-North Borneo ecoregion is relatively poorly known. The present study reports the first records of the occurrence of four species of the seastar genus, Astropecten, from muddy/sandy, intertidal and benthic ecosystems in Brunei. We briefly describe the species, showing key distinguishing features, and discuss their distributions in modified coastal ecosystems and natural embayments in Brunei. Finally we discuss the geographical distributions of these species within the South China Sea and elsewhere.