Halecium balei Fraser, 1911

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 : 29-30

Halecium balei Fraser, 1911

Halecium gracile Bale, 1888: 759 , pl. 14, figs. 1–3 [invalid junior primary homonym of Halecium gracile Verrill, 1874 ]. Halecium balei Fraser, 1911: 46 [new replacement name for Halecium gracile Bale, 1888 , not Halecium gracile Verrill, 1874 ].

Syntypes. NMV F58760 : Australia, New South Wales, Port Stephens , on Aglaophenia sp., labelled as “co-types”; two microslides ( Stranks 1993: 6).

Type locality. Australia: Port Stephens and Port Jackson ( Bale 1888).

Current status.? Invalid.

Remarks. Halecium balei was proposed by Fraser (1911) as a replacement name for H. gracile Bale, 1888 , recognized as an invalid junior primary homonym of H. gracile Verrill, 1874 . In turn, H. balei has been held to be a junior subjective synonym of H. delicatulum Coughtrey, 1876 ( Vervoort & Watson 2003), although the status of the species is still open to question ( Galea et al. 2014: 15).

As an objective synonym of H. gracile Bale, 1888 , Halecium balei Fraser, 1911 has the same name-bearing type material (ICZN Art. 72.7), namely that at the NMV (NMV F58760 ). A search for type material of H. gracile in collections at the Australian Museum, Sydney, was unsuccessful (Stephen Keable, personal communication, 24 January 2017).