I'm trying to determine some preliminary distribution info for a few soft coral species that may cross over from temperate to tropical waters. I'm particularly interested in Telesto sanguinea, Leptagorgia virgulata, L. hebes. Have you seen them further south than mid-Florida and if so where did you locate them? Also, have you seen them in the Gulf of Mexico?
Thanks!
Telesto sanguinea and Leptogorgia do show up in Gulf. Google Scholar would be your friend here. I keep it up permanently as it will Google anything scientific without all those garbage sites. For T. sanguinea several linkable sites show up for distribution, including one for octocoral distribution and abundance in Gulf of Mexico. That one is unpublished PhD dissertation from Texas. Abundant high-quality data.
I have seen L. hebes occasionally throughout the Gulf and Caribbean. Both L. hebes and virgulata are common on hard bottom, both artificial and natural, in the northern eastern Gulf.
You may wish to check out NOAA's Deep-Sea Coral & Sponge Data Portal.
https://deepseacoraldata.noaa.gov/
The map portal (click on the map) has a data query tab, where you can enter a scientific name. While most of the records are currently from US waters, there are quite a few records from elsewhere in the Caribbean (mostly from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History). Our database focuses on species that occur deeper than 50 m, so it may not capture some of the species you are interested in.
There are records of Telesto sanguinea from the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico.
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