Family Ophiactidae

A total of 18 COI sequences trimmed to 554 bp were obtained after removing ambiguous aligned sites and were used to reconstruct the ML tree (Fig. 48). Two main clades were detected within the family. Sub- Clade 02 represented all Ophiactis species recorded from the South China Sea. Ophiactis cf. perplexa,

O. cf. brachygenys and O. profundi fell into two inter-clades within Sub-Clade 02 (Inter-Clades 2A and 2B) (Fig. 48). Genetic distance values are provided in Suppl. file 9.