Cerianthus medusula (Klunzinger, 1877)

Stampar, Sergio N., Reimer, James D., Maronna, Maximiliano M., Lopes, Celine S. S., Ceriello, Hellen, Santos, Thais B., Acuna, Fabian H. & Morandini, Andre C., 2020, Ceriantharia (Cnidaria) of the World: an annotated catalogue and key to species, ZooKeys 952, pp. 1-63 : 1

15 Cerianthus medusula (Klunzinger, 1877)

Paractis medusula Klunzinger, 1877: 71-72

Cerianthus medusula Andres, 1883: 353-354; Cerfontaine 1891a: 37-38; van Beneden 1897: 141; Mello-Leitão 1919: 36

(?) Pachycerianthus maua : Krempf 1905: 195

(?) Pachycerianthus mana : Fishelson 1970: 109

Type locality.

Al-Qusair (Red Sea), Egypt.

Distribution.

Only known from shallow water (at <5 m depth) at the type locality.

Remarks.

This is another species with only little available data, and these are quite contradictory. This species was described as a sea anemone (order Actiniaria ) by Klunzinger (1877) based only on the external morphology. Andres (1883) described some aspects of the external morphology based on work by Klunzinger (1877) and indicated that this must be a species of family Cerianthidae . Cerfontaine (1891a) argued that this species may be the same as C. oligopodus (= Arachanthus oligopodus ) found in Italy, and furthermore the specimen observed by Klunzinger (1877) was not in good condition. However, it is not possible to make more statements about this species due to the absence of material available from the region. On the other hand, the indication that this species is a member of the family Arachnactidae as stated by Cerfontaine (1891a) seems to be incorrect. The few characters present in the descriptions are not consistent with those of the Arachnactidae , but instead with those of the Cerianthidae . This is a species that requires additional sampling from the type locality for further examination, especially as some specimens identified as Pachycerianthus maua Carlgren, 1900 have been subsequently collected from the same region ( Krempf 1905; Fishelson 1970).

Type material.

Not found in this study, but the original description provided a graphic representation.