Swiftia pusilla (Nutting, 1909) Nutting, 1909

Breedy, Odalisca & Guzman, Hector M., 2015, A revision of the genus Muricea Lamouroux, 1821 (Anthozoa, Octocorallia) in the eastern Pacific. Part I: Eumuricea Verrill, 1869 revisited, ZooKeys 537, pp. 1-32 : 18

Taxon classification Animalia Alcyonacea Plexauridae

Swiftia pusilla (Nutting, 1909) comb. n. Figure 11

Eumuricea pusilla Nutting, 1909: 718-719; Kükenthal 1924: 152.

Material.

Holotype. USNM 25430, ethanol/dry preserved, Point Loma, San Diego, California, Albatross R/V, California Coast Expedition, 166-177 m, 15 May 1904.

Description

(after Nutting 1909: 718). The holotype was a small, roughly flabellate colony, 37 mm long, branching in an irregular manner. The main stem gives off four alternate branches at irregular intervals, the two longest being 13 mm apart. The calyces are low rounded domes, about 1 mm long and 2 mm wide, separated about 2.5 mm from summit to summit. The polyps are completely retracted. "The calycular walls are covered with very hispid spicules (sclerites), which have their edges somewhat overlapping and are, in general, disposed transversely rather than otherwise". Nutting reports the presence of a collaret and tentacles armed with sharp spindle-shaped sclerites longitudinally arranged, but in chevron at the base of the tentacles. Other type of sclerites are asymmetrical spindles with irregular sharp edges and processes, various types of clubs, scales, stars and double stars. The colour of the colony is whitish to gray.

Distribution.

Reported for the type locality Point Loma, California.

Remarks.

What remain from the holotype are small pieces of branches: two fragments, 16 mm and 12 mm long, the former with 9 polyps, the latter with 5 (pers. comm. S. Cairns) (Fig. 11A). Nutting’s illustrations (1909, PL. LXXXVIII) show some fragments of a thin colony. The sclerites are almost disintegrated, SEMs obtained by S. Cairns (USNM) show spindles as the prevailing type of sclerites (Fig. 11B). It is not possible to confirm the other types of sclerites described by Nutting (1909) and his description is fairly general. However, the characteristics that we could analyse of the species fit with the genus Swiftia . For this reason, we herein propose the genus Swiftia as a more accurate alternative for the species (Table 2).