Bimeria brevis Fraser, 1918c

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 : 10

Bimeria brevis Fraser, 1918c

Bimeria brevis Fraser, 1918c: 338 , pl. 1, figs. 2a–c.

Garveia brevis .— Cairns et al., 1991: 14.

Syntypes. BCPM 976-00172-001 : Canada, Bay of Fundy.

BCPM 976-00172-002 : Canada, Bay of Fundy.

Lectotype, by present designation. BCPM 976-00172-001 : Canada, New Brunswick, St. Andrews, Katy Cove , on a tubulariid stem, one colony, up to 3 mm high, without gonophores; slide.

Paralectotype. BCPM 976-00172-002 : Canada, Bay of Fundy ; slide.

Type locality. Canada, New Brunswick: St. Andrews, Katy Cove , on a tubulariid ( Fraser 1918c).

Current status. Species inquirenda (WoRMS).

Remarks. Name-bearing types were not designated in the original description of Bimeria brevis Fraser, 1918c . Specimens on two slides in the Fraser Hydroid Collection at the RBCM (BCPM 976-00172-001, BCPM 976- 00172-002) are regarded here as syntypes. These collections are recorded in the RBCM database as being from the Bay of Fundy. Notably, the type locality of the species in the original description (Katy Cove, located at St. Andrews, New Brunswick) is within the Bay of Fundy region. The only other records of the species given by Fraser (1944a) are from Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia), Portland (Maine), and Casco Bay (Maine), all outside the stated type locality. As lectotype of the species, we designate a colony or part of a colony on one of the syntype slides (BCPM 976-00172-001). Two colony fragments are present on that slide, with the lectotype specimen occurring on the longer of two tubulariid stems.

Fraser’s (1918c) account of Bimeria brevis was based on sterile and possibly juvenile material. His hydroids appear to have been bougainvilliids, but they are not referable to Bimeria Wright, 1859 because no perisarcal covering exists over the bases of the tentacles. Cairns et al. (1991, 2002) assigned the species to Garveia Wright, 1859 , but that seems open to question. In WoRMS, G. brevis is justifiably listed as a taxon inquirenda.