Halopteris alternata ( Nutting 1900 )

Torres-Rodríguez, Javier, Ortiz-Oyola, Daniel, Puentes-Sayo, Alejandra, Lecompte, Orlando P. & Jauregui, Aminta, 2020, Genetic and morphologic identities of hydrozoans (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) from reef patches of Santa Marta, Colombian Caribbean, Zootaxa 4758 (1), pp. 127-140 : 134

1) Halopteris alternata ( Nutting 1900) .

During the twentieth century, different authors started to follow Bedot (1914) considering H. alternata as cotermi- nous with Halopteris diaphana ( Heller 1868) . Oliveira et al. (2016) compiled available records in the literature for 905 hydrozoans of South America; there they included the record of H. diaphana by Vervoort (1968) from Puerto Colombia in the synonyms of Halopteris alternata . However, Schuchert (1997) documented several characters distinguishing this two species, such as an axillar nematotheca that usually present distal to cauline hydrothecae, segmentation of the hydrocaulus mostly homomerous and hydrocladial internodes usually with one rather than 2–3 nematotheca. Based on this differences H. alternata is here taken to be a different species from H. diaphana and therefore it is not correct to consider them synonymous. Moreover, this species has been reported previously in other parts of the Caribbean ( Calder & Kirkendale 2005, Galea 2008)