Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer, 1889

France, Scott C., 2017, A taxonomic review of the genus Acanella (Cnidaria: Octocorallia: Isididae) in the North Atlantic Ocean, with descriptions of two new species, Zootaxa 4323 (3), pp. 359-390 : 373-374

Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer, 1889

Figure 8

Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer, 1889: 31 , pl. IX, fig 3.

Type: Collected via dredge. Station 301, in the Messier Channel, Patagonia, Chile . 175 fathoms depth. Indicated as deposited in the Natural History Museum, London; however we were not able to verify the location of the type specimen at the time of this publication.

For description see: Wright & Studer 1889

Remarks: The specimens represented by Haplotype C ( Figure 8 ) have 5̄ 7 mm tall polyps with curved, slightly club-shaped sclerites with spine-like projections, which corresponds with the species description of A. chiliensis as described in Wright and Studer (1889). A. chiliensis is the only valid species within the genus that has club-shaped sclerites. Published reports of A. chiliensis appear only once, a collection from the eastern South Pacific (Messier Channel, Patagonia, Chile) at 320 m depth; our samples thus expand the known distribution of the species to the western South Pacific and Indian Ocean (New Zealand-Kermadec [n=5] and Indian [n=1] deep-sea provinces; Watling et al. 2013) and the depth range to 1195 m.

Distribution: South Pacific and Indian Ocean, 320̄ 1195 m depth.

Figures

FIGURE 8. SEM images of Acanella chiliensis (Haplotype C, MAIN 31392). A) Tentacle sclerites. B) Coenenchyme sclerites. C) Polyp body sclerites.