Heteractidae Andres, 1883

Titus, Benjamin M., Bennett-Smith, Morgan F., Chiodo, Tommaso & Rodríguez, Estefanía, 2024, The clownfish-hosting sea anemones (Anthozoa: Actiniaria): updated nomenclature, biogeography, and practical field guide., Zootaxa 5506 (1), pp. 1-34 : 4

Family Heteractidae Andres, 1883

England (1988) formally reinstated and modified the diagnosis of the family Heteractidae to include new data about members of the genus Heteractis and its type species, H. aurora (Quoy & Gaimard, 1883) , which become monotypic.He left the remaining members formerly belonging to the genus Heteractis in the family Stichodactylidae , moving them to the resurrected genus Radianthus Kwietnewski, 1896 ( R. crispa , R. magnifica , R. malu ) ( England, 1988). Heteractis and Radianthus are differentiated by the presence of macrobasic amastigophore nematocysts (= p -mastigophores A with looped tubule according to cnidae terminology in Gusmão et al. 2018) in H. aurora that are absent in species of Radianthus . Because the former Macrodactyla doreensis ( Heteractis doreensis after Yap et al. 2023) does not have macrobasic p -amastigophores (ER unpubl. data), this species is referred to the genus Radianthus (as R. doreensis ) until phylogenetic relationships of former members of Heteractis are clarified.

Included Taxa

Heteractis aurora (Quoy & Gaimard, 1883)

Differentiated from other members formerly in the genus Heteractis by the presence of macrobasic amastigophores in several regions of the body. Although molecular data do not differentiate H. aurora from members formerly in the genus ( Titus et al. 2019; Yap et al. 2023), we follow England (1988) until further revision is available.