Plumularia wilsoni Bale, 1926

Watson, Jeanette E., 2015, A new species of Halopteris (Hydrozoa: Leptothecata) and redescription of Plumularia rotunda from Victoria, Australia, Memoirs of Museum Victoria 73, pp. 41-46 : 45

Note on Plumularia wilsoni Bale, 1926

A microslide NMV F 59050 in the Bale collection of Museum Victoria displays two infertile stems labelled “ Plumularia delicatula Bale, 1882 , Griffiths Point, 1881, J.R.Y. Goldstein”. Stranks (1993) suggested it may be a syntype of P. delicatula . I designate this microslide as lectotype of Plumularia delicatula Bale, 1882 . Bale (1882, 1919) provided good descriptions of P. delicatula but because of pre-occupation of the name [now Lytocarpia delicatula (Busk, 1852) ] in 1926 he renamed the species Plumularia wilsoni .

Plumularia wilsoni has since been recorded from New Zealand ( Ralph 1961) and Tasmania ( Watson 1975). Vervoort and Watson (2003) suggested that Plumularia wilsoni may be an extreme variant of Plumularia setaceoides Bale, 1882 , however, comparison of the lectotype of P. delicatula with material from Tasmania and South Australia (author, unpubl.) shows constant morphological features that clearly distinguishes P. wilsoni from P. setaceoides .