First record of the starfish Goniaster tesselatus at Madeira Island

Abstract

Numerous new records of marine species, mostly with tropical affinities, have been made at Madeira Island in recent years (e. g. Ramalhosa et al. 2014 and 2017, Wirtz 2020 a, Wirtz & Araujo 2021). Some of these species appear to have extended their range northwards (e. g. Wirtz & Berenger 2017, Schäfer et al. 2019, Wirtz 2021), possibly due to global warming (Siemer et al. 2021).

Eleven shallow-water starfish species are known from Madeira Island (Wirtz 2020 b). We report here on one more species previous unrecorded for Madeiran waters.