Egmundella grandis 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 : 25-26

Egmundella grandis Fraser, 1941b

Egmundella grandis Fraser, 1941b: 82 , pl. 16, figs. 8a, b.

Syntypes. USNM 43455 : USA, Virginia, Chesapeake Bay , off mouth, R/ V Fish Hawk Sta. 897, 37°25’N, 74°18’W, 16 November 1880, 288 m, trawl, several small colonies or colony fragments, labelled “ type ”; ethanol + four slides.

Lectotype, by present designation. USNM 43455 : USA, Virginia, Chesapeake Bay , off mouth, R/ V Fish Hawk Sta. 897, 37°25’N, 74°18’W, 16 November 1880, 288 m, trawl, one sparse colony or colony fragment on a bivalve shell, in mediocre condition, without gonophores, labelled “ type ”; ethanol.

Paralectotypes. USNM 1458863 : USA, Virginia, Chesapeake Bay , off mouth, R/ V Fish Hawk Sta. 897, 37°25’N, 74°18’W, 16 November 1880, 288 m, trawl, several tiny colony fragments, in mediocre condition, without gonophores; ethanol + four slides.

Type locality. USA, Virginia: slope waters east of Chesapeake Bay, 37°25’N, 74°18’W (north of Washington Canyon), 157.5 fm (288 m) ( Fraser 1941b).

Current status. Valid.

Remarks. Material designated as the “ type ” of Egmundella grandis by Fraser (1941b) is at the NMNH (USNM 43455). That collection comprised syntypes, with material in ethanol and on four slides. The best of these specimens, growing on a bivalve shell and returned to the original vial (USNM 43455), is designated here as the lectotype. All others in the type series are paralectotypes (USNM 1458863). The four slides forming part of this series are relatively recent preparations and were not made by Fraser.

While the location of this collection was given by Fraser (1941b) as the state of Maryland, coordinates reveal instead that the specimens were from the continental slope off the eastern shore of Virginia.

On the basis of morphology, biogeography, and habitat, a report of E. grandis from shallow waters of Belize ( Spracklin 1982), in the Caribbean Sea, is considered by us to be a misidentification. No other records exist of this obscure and briefly described species, known only from its trophosome. Regarded as valid here, it is not listed in WoRMS. The species was excluded from the lists of Cairns et al. (1991, 2002) earlier because its depth (288 m) was below the 200 m bathymetric limit set in those two works.