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영어

Ocean currents play an important role in the dispersal of marine animals by providing routes for intended migrations and accidental drifts. In North East Asia, three Laticaudine sea snake species have been listed including Laticauda laticaudata, L. colubrina and L. semifasciata. Among them, L. semifasciata are found from the southwestern Pacific Ocean to northern Ryukyu regions. We have been studying sea snakes, for the first time, in Korea since 2013 to verify if sea snakes are founded in Korean waters, what different species are present, and what its originality is if there is. Finally, we obtained three Laticaudinae sea snakes from local fishermen, caught in Jeju Island waters in 2015, and one caught in Yeosu water in 2016. All specimens were classified as L. semifasciata based on their distinctive morphological characteristics such as internasal scale, horizontally divided rostral scales and evident ‘V’-shaped stripes on the body trunk and molecular data based on cytochrome b of mtDNA. And we investigated possible origin of the specimens by comparing mitochondrial cytochrome (Cyt) b genes of the four specimens with those of four specimens from Taiwan and those from NCBI Database through haplotype network analysis. Our results suggest that the L. semifasciata collected in Korean waters might be accidental drifters from Taiwan-Ryukyu regions although we could not completely exclude they are residents in Korean waters. This study suggests one of the routes that marine creatures drift from southern Pacific Ocean to Korean waters. This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2014R1A1A4A01005302) and National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea under Research Program (number 2016M00300).