Botruanthus benedeni (Torrey & Kleeberger, 1909)

Stampar, Sergio N., Reimer, James D., Maronna, Maximiliano M., Lopes, Celine S. S., Ceriello, Hellen, Santos, Thais B., Acuna, Fabian H. & Morandini, Andre C., 2020, Ceriantharia (Cnidaria) of the World: an annotated catalogue and key to species, ZooKeys 952, pp. 1-63 : 1

42 Botruanthus benedeni (Torrey & Kleeberger, 1909)

Pachycerianthus benedeni Roule, 1904: 708-710

Cerianthus benedeni : Torrey and Kleeberger 1909: 115, 119, 120-123, 125; Pax 1910: 167;

Botryanthus benedeni : McMurrich 1910: 11; Torelli 1932: 9

Botruanthus benedeni : Carlgren 1912a: 44-47; Leloup 1932: 17; Carlgren 1951: 431, 433-435; Arai 1965: 205; den Hartog 1977: 211, 233, 236-237; Molodtsova 2001c: 1027, 1033-1035; Fautin et al. 2007: 551-552, 567-569; Stampar et al. 2016 b: 1; 5

Type locality.

San Diego Bay, California, United States of America.

Distribution.

California (United States of America), Baja California (Mexico) and Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), shallow waters.

Remarks.

This species was described based on a study of a single specimen. This species (and genus) is characterized by possessing wart-like structures (cnidorages) organized in bunches (botrucnids) in the mesenterial filaments. Except for these structures, the anatomy is very similar to species of the genus Pachycerianthus . The holotype is not available, and we therefore here designate a neotype collected from the same region by Charles Cutress in 1955 (NMNH 49400). This specimen was studied by Stampar et al. (2017) (erroneously referred to as “holotype”) and its characters are consistent with those in the original description. Because of its importance as type species of the genus Botruanthus , the neotype designation for this species is justified. This is a poorly studied genus and there is no biological or ecological information about this species.

Type material.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (USNM) - 49400 (neotype).