Plumularia floridana Nutting, 1900

Calder, Dale R., 2013, Some shallow-water hydroids (Cnidaria: Hydrozoa) from the central east coast of Florida, USA, Zootaxa 3648 (1), pp. 1-72 : 37

Plumularia floridana Nutting, 1900

Fig. 10d

Plumularia floridana Nutting, 1900: 59 , pl. 2, figs. 4–5.— Jones, 2002: 217.

Type locality. USA: Florida, “two miles west of Cape Romano...” ( Nutting 1990: 59) .

Voucher material. Off Vero Beach, 27°41.2’N, 80°14.5’W, 17 m, 13.ii.1974, small biological dredge, R/ V Gosnold Station 220/226, four colony fragments, up to 1.9 cm high, without gonophores, ROMIZ B1080 .

Remarks. Material examined here came from a station on the inner continental shelf off Vero Beach. With the exception of its occurrence on floating Sargassum ( Fraser 1944) , Plumularia floridana Nutting, 1900 is a species more frequently recorded inshore than offshore along the southeastern United States. While common in estuaries of South Carolina ( Calder & Hester 1978; Calder 1983), it has not yet been reported from hard bottom areas on the shelf between North Carolina and Florida ( Cain 1972; Wenner et al. 1984). As noted earlier ( Calder 1997), the species is eurytopic, surviving temperatures down to 10° C and salinities as low as 25‰.

An extensive synonymy of this species is listed in Ansín Agís et al. (2001), who described material from the Canary Islands.

Reported distribution. Atlantic coast of Florida. Biscayne Bay ( Jones 2002).

Western Atlantic. South Carolina ( Calder 1983) to Brazil (Oliveira et al. submitted), including Bermuda ( Calder 1997) and the Gulf of Mexico ( Calder & Cairns 2009). It extends northwards to New England on Sargassum ( Fraser 1944) .

Elsewhere. Believed to be circumglobal, mostly in tropical and warm-temperate waters ( Ansín Agís et al. 2001).

Figures

FIGURE 10. a, Dentitheca dendritica: part of hydrocladium with two hydrothecae, ROMIZ B1130, scale equals 0.10 mm. b, Nemertesia simplex: apophysis and basal part of hydrocladium, ROMIZ B1121, scale equals 0.20 mm. c, Nemertesia simplex: part of hydrocladium with hydrotheca, ROMIZ B1121, scale equals 0.10 mm. d, Plumularia floridana: part of hydrocaulus with basal parts of two hydrocladia, and three hydrothecae, ROMIZ B1080, scale equals 0.25 mm. e, Plumularia setacea: part of hydrocaulus with basal parts of two hydrocladia, a female gonotheca, and a hydrotheca, ROMIZ B1111, scale equals 0.20 mm. f, Plumularia strictocarpa: part of hydrocaulus with basal parts of two hydrocladia, and three hydrothecae, ROMIZ B3971, scale equals 0.20 mm.