Hundreds of genes place a yellow Costa Rican seamount coral in a new family

When a standard three-gene panel returns three unrelated families, any placement drawn from it is a guess ^[8]. The team turned to phylogenomics, which compares hundreds of genes at the same time ^[9]. A placement supported across that many genes is much harder for one misleading marker to overturn. The larger dataset clarified where the coral sits ^[9].

Anatomy carried half the case. According to the Pensoft Publishers release, the new family rests on genetic and anatomical differences together ^[10][18]. Breedy's account puts the anatomy first. "I thought the species could belong to a known family and genera, but after the preliminar morphological analysis I realised that it was something very different that I could not match with the known taxa," she said ^[12].

She first saw the site in 2019. "I saw the octocoral garden for the first time in 2019 and I was impressed by the beauty of the landscape, which inspired, later the elvish name of the taxa," she said ^[11]. The genus name comes from the Quenya word for "golden tree," and elenya means "stellar" or "of the stars," for the brittle stars crowded around the colonies ^[7]. The family placement waited for a second trip. "In 2023 we collected more samples and thanks to the exhaustive molecular analyses made by my colleagues, Cathy McFadden, Catalina Murillo and Andrea Quattrini, we were able to determine the taxonomic placement of the stunning species, in one of the most enigmatic sites," she said ^[13]. Four years passed between the first sighting and the samples that settled the question ^[19].

The colonies span a 169-meter band of depth ^[20], on seamounts near Isla del Coco and along Costa Rica's Pacific margin ^[5]. The Schmidt Ocean Institute and a National Geographic Society research grant supported the expeditions ^[14].

The release places the coral among a growing number of previously undocumented species from Costa Rica's seamounts, in a deep ocean that covers roughly two-thirds of Earth's surface and remains poorly explored ^[15]. Coral gardens like this one are considered vulnerable marine ecosystems ^[16]. The thing this doesn't tell you is how far the family ranges or what pressure its sites face. Every specimen comes from Costa Rican seamounts ^[5], and the release does not link the site to a specific threat, deep-sea mining included.

I think the method holds the wider lesson. A coral striking enough to inspire an Elvish name still needed hundreds of genes to place ^[7][9]. Surveys of seamount fauna that rely on short marker panels can file some of what they collect under the wrong family, as the first three genes would have done here ^[8].