Rosulapelta floridana (Smitt, 1873) Smitt, 1873

Judith L Winston, 2016, Bryozoa of Floridan Oculina reefs, Zootaxa 4071 (1), pp. 1-81 : 36-37

Rosulapelta floridana (Smitt, 1873) comb. nov.

( Fig. 19 ; Table 18 )

Cribrilina figularis var. floridana Smitt, 1873: 23 (part), pl. 5, fig. 111.

Cribrilina floridana: Osburn 1914: 195 .

Puellina floridana: Canu & Bassler 1928a: 74 , pl. 14, figs 3, 5–7 (not fig. 4, redrawn from Smitt’s fig. 112), text-fig. 11B.

Pelmatopora (sensu lato) apsata Shier, 1964: 626, fig. 8.

Reginella floridana: Cheetham & Sandberg 1964: 1026 , text-fig. 25; Winston 1982: 134, fig. 59; Winston 2005: 38, figs 98– 100.

Material examined. VMNH no. 70628, 70629; USNM no. 1283245.

Description. Colony encrusting calcareous substrata. Zooids irregularly oval with a frontal shield made up of 5–7 pairs of radially arranged costae, with rows of relatively large lumen pores separating them; costae with hollow tubules that give colony a prickly appearance. Orifice semicircular, with 2 erect, bifid or trifid distal spines and 2 fused flattened lateral spines that arch over it. Proximal edge of orifice hidden by scalloped rim formed by wide, flattened, medially fused first pair of costae. No avicularia. Ovicell unknown.

Remarks. Smitt (1873, figs 111, 112) illustrated two colonies that he named Cribrilina figularis var. floridana ; only his fig. 111, based on a colony on a piece of shell from 29 fathoms, pertains to Reginella floridana of later authors (see Winston 2005). Cook (1985) described a similar species, Reginella aff. floridana , from Ghana, but the specimen illustrated had a larger number of costae and lacked the fused lateral-oral spines characteristic of Floridan material. As Cook (1985) suggested, R. floridana may be a species complex. No ovicells have ever been found in either Ghanaian or western Atlantic material, and it seems likely that brooding is internal. The Floridan species seems related to Rosulapelta repangulata (Winston & Håkansson, 1986) and Rosulapelta rosetta Winston & Vieira, 2013 . In both of these species the costal area is smaller than in R. floridana and R. repangulata has a visible ooecium. Notwithstanding, R. floridana is closer in overall morphology to Rosulapelta than to either Reginella or Puellina . R. floridana also seems to be closely related to Spiniflabellum spinosum (Canu & Bassler, 1928) , with which it shares the lack of an externally visible ooecium, but in Spiniflabellum (Di Martino & Rosso, 2015) , the costal shield, with tubular pelmatidia on the costae, is more prominent.

Distribution. Cape Hatteras to Tortugas and Gulf of Mexico.

Figures

FIGURE 19. Rosulapelta floridana (Smitt, 1873): A, encrusting colony, partly abraded; B, close up of zooid showing costal bar over the orifice; C, two zooids with incomplete costal bars; D, close up of another orifice at growing edge. Scale bars: A, 1 mm; B, C, E, 0.1 mm; D, 0.04 mm.

Tables

TABLE 18. Measurements in mm of Rosulapelta floridana (Smitt, 1873).

	Lz	Wz	Lo	Wo
N	18	18	18	18
Mean	0.504	0.355	0.074	0.109
SD	0.034	0.024	0.009	0.011
Min	0.450	0.324	0.054	0.090
Max	0.576	0.396	0.090	0.126