Hydractinia valens Fraser, 1941b

Calder, Dale R. & Choong, Henry H. C., 2018, Names of hydroids (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) established by Charles McLean Fraser (1872 - 1946), excluding those from Allan Hancock Expeditions, Zootaxa 4487 (1), pp. 1-83 : 16

publication ID	https://doi.org/ 10.11646/zootaxa.4487.1.1
publication LSID	lsid:zoobank.org:pub:524B23B9-8EAA-4BD6-8937-A1B8F1C057B9
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5968287
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/0392282A-FFE9-FFEB-AEC1-5CF51823F97D
treatment provided by	Plazi
scientific name	Hydractinia valens Fraser, 1941b
status

Treatment

Hydractinia valens Fraser, 1941b: 79 , pl. 13, figs. 2a–e.

Holotype. USNM 43451 About USNM : USA, Massachusetts, R/ V Speedwell Sta. 284, SW of Stellwagen Bank, 42°10’N, 70°22’W, 57 m, 0 4 August 1879, trawl, one colony on shell of a live gastropod, in rather poor condition, with a few gonophores, labelled “ type ”; ethanol. GoogleMaps

Type locality. USA, Massachusetts: SW of Stellwagen Bank , 42°10’N, 70°22’W, 31 fm (57 m) ( Fraser 1941b). GoogleMaps

Current status. Valid.

Remarks. A specimen of Hydractinia valens Fraser, 1941b at the NMNH (USNM 43451) is currently listed in the online database as a syntype, although the specimen count in the online database is recorded as “1”. Fraser had designated it as the “ type.” No other specimens of the species, type or otherwise, are reported in collections at the AMNH, CAS, MCZ, RBCM, or YPM. From his original description (“Colony growing from ...”), Fraser (1941b) seems to have examined a single specimen in describing the species. We therefore take the only colony of the species at the NMNH (USNM 43451), examined here, to be the holotype by monotypy (ICZN Art. 73.1.2).

Hydractinia valens , known to date solely from the brief account of Fraser (1941b), is regarded as valid ( Cairns et al. 2002; WoRMS). It apparently differs from the sympatric H. polyclina L. Agassiz, 1860 and H. symbiolongicarpus Buss & Yund, 1989 in having spines that are short and smooth rather than tall and jagged. Fraser described its gastrozooids as “large and lusty” (to 4.5 mm high), with 10 tentacles (according to Fraser 1947a, the number of tentacles is 12). Gonozooids lacked tentacles, and bore fixed sporosacs each having about six ova. Fraser did not record the substrate of the species, but the holotype is on the shell of a gastropod with the snail still inside.