Eucuspidella Fraser, 1944a

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 : 27

Genus Eucuspidella Fraser, 1944a

Eucuspidella Fraser, 1944a: 172 .

Type species. Cuspidella pedunculata Αllman, 1877, by monotypy.

Current status. Valid.

Remarks. Fraser (1944a) concluded that Cuspidella pedunculata Allman, 1877 exceeded the bounds of the genus Cuspidella Hincks, 1866 in having a pedicellate rather than a sessile hydrotheca. He therefore established Eucuspidella for the species. Other characters distinguishing the genus were a tubular or fusiform hydrotheca that merged imperceptibly with the pedicel, opercular valves with no demarcation from the hydrothecal wall, and the absence of a diaphragm and nematophores. Gonophores of E. pedunculata , a minute species reported from bathyal waters (475 m) off the Dry Tortugas, Florida (Allman 1877), and with some uncertainty from 4798 m in the Windward Passage north of Haiti ( Vervoort 1972), remain unknown.

Eucuspidella has been provisionally upheld as valid in some works ( Vervoort 1972; Calder 1996; Bouillon et al. 2006). In others, it has been assigned to the synonymy of Campanulina Van Beneden, 1847 and to the family Campanulinidae Hincks, 1868 (e.g., WoRMS). That assignment is untenable given that Campanulina tenuis Van Beneden, 1847 , a widely misconceived hydrozoan having decidedly different morphological characters (see Rees 1939: 435–437; Calder 1991:5, 6), is the type species of that genus. Meanwhile, the family Campanulinidae Hincks, 1868 , as originally defined, is based on a misidentified type genus ( Campanulina sensu Allman, 1864 , not Campanulina Van Beneden, 1847 ). Widespread taxonomic confusion thus persists at present over the concepts of both Campanulina and Campanulinidae . As for its phylogenetic affinities, Eucuspidella cannot be assigned at present with confidence to any known family.