Muricea tubigera Verrill, 1869

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 : 16

Taxon classification Animalia Alcyonacea Plexauridae

Muricea tubigera Verrill, 1869 Figures 9, 10

Muricea (Eumuricea) tubigera Verrill, 1869a: 421-422.

Eumuricea tubigera Kükenthal, 1924: 150.

Material.

Holotype: YPM 807, dry, figured specimen, Pearl Islands, Panamá, low tide, F.H. Bradley, 1866.

Description.

The holotype is a 17 cm tall and 10 cm wide stout and rigid colony, branching mostly dichotomous (Fig. 9A). A short stem, 1 cm in diameter, 1.5 cm long, arises from an oval 3 cm diameter holdfast, and subdivides in two main branches, 0.8-1.2 mm diameter, that fork producing secondary branches that subdivide up to 3 times. All branches are almost the same diameter with blunt, clavate tips. The branches are at distances of 2-7 cm apart and stick upwards at small angles of 30°-35°. Undivided terminal branches are up to 70 mm long, and 7-8 mm in diameter. The axes are dark brown. The calyces are uniformly crowding the branches, close together, about 26 calyces/cm. They are tubular, slender and elongated, up to 5 mm long and up to 0.75 mm wide, with clavate summits. The borders of the calyces are surrounded by long, slender and sharp spindles that project from the surface giving a prickly appearance to the branches (Fig. 9B). What remains of the polyps is at the summit of the elevated calyces, the apertures are covered by anthocodial sclerites and some calyx sclerites. The coenenchyme is of a few layers of sclerites, basically of the same types as the calyx spindles. They are mostly unilateral spinous spindles, large, slender, with sharp, blunt or bifurcated ends, some are spinulose on the outer surface and tuberculate on the inner, measuring 0.80-2.0 mm long and 0.07-0.30 mm wide (Fig. 10A). The calyx wall is mostly formed by warty, slender rods with one end acute and the other with long complex spines These sclerites are 0.435-0.76 mm long and 0.50-0.65 mm wide, they can have conic spines on the outer side of the sclerite and sparse warts on the inner side (Fig. 10 B). Verrill (1869a) reported a maximum size of 2.34 mm long. The axial sheath is composed of warty spindles (Fig. 10C) and tuberculate radiates, 0.12-0.46 mm long and 0.1-0.4 mm wide (Fig. 10D). All sclerites are whitish to colourless (Fig. 9C). The colour of the colony is light brown.

Distribution.

Reported only from the type locality, Pearl Islands, Panamá. This species has not been found in our recent surveys along the Pacific coast of Panamá.

Remarks.

Verrill (1869a) described this species with one specimen that constitutes the holotype. The very long and slender calyces of this species, the sharper spindles and the thickness of the branches separate this species from the others (Table 1).