Khulisa, Boonzaaier-Davids & Florence & Gibbons, 2020

Boonzaaier-Davids, Melissa K., Florence, Wayne K. & Gibbons, Mark J., 2020, Novel taxa of Cheilostomata Bryozoa discovered in the historical backlogs of the Iziko South African Museum, Zootaxa 4820 (1), pp. 105-133 : 116

Genus Khulisa n. gen.

zoobank.org/ 1B5C9493-D53B-4D04-B9CA-72632F0B3E1B

Type species. Khulisa carolinae n. sp.

Etymology. Khulisa , meaning ‘enlarge’ in isiZulu, the native language of the Zulu people, referring to the enlarged, dimorphic autozooids.

Diagnosis. Colony encrusting. Zooid frontal almost entirely composed of a costal shield with the first pair of costae forming a raised suboral bar; lateral gymnocyst extremely reduced. Intercostal lacunae present; lumen pores absent. Avicularia interzooidal. Ovicells absent, brooding presumably taking place in enlarged dimorphic zooids. Interzooidal communication through uniporous mural septula.

Remarks. Genera in the family Cribrilinidae are characterised by autozooids having a costate shield made up of hollow spines or costae ( Hayward & Ryland 1979). The new cribrimorph genus has a very different costate shield compared to other genera in the family Cribrilinidae Hincks, 1879 , e.g. Cribrilina Gray, 1848 , Cribrilaria Canu & Bassler, 1929 , Cribralaria Silén, 1941 , Jolietina Jullien, 1886 , Puellina Jullien, 1886 . Khulisa n. gen. is also distinguished from other Cribrilinidae by the presence of dimorphic autozooids and the type of interzooidal avicularia. It may be that the dimorphic, enlarged autozooids are brooding zooids, although no apparent larvae were observed in the alcohol-preserved material. Presence of the larval incubation in the internal brood sacs was suggested in some cribrilinids in which ovicells were not found ( Ostrovsky et al. 2009).

Another distinctive feature of Khulisa n. gen. is the raised apertural bar. An apertural bar is usually formed by the distal pair of costae, immediately proximal to the orifice ( Hayward & Ryland 1979). In most taxa the bar is levelled with the costate frontal shield. A raised apertural bar was described in Spiniflabellum Di Martino & Rosso, 2015 and in the subgenus Juxtacribrilina Yang, Seo, Min, Grischenko & Gordon 2018 . Spiniflabellum differs from Khulisa n. gen. in having tubular pelmatidia and numerous, coalescent, hollow spines aligned in a convex arch distal to the orifice to form a flabellate structure ( Di Martino & Rosso 2015), while Juxtacribrilina differs in having ovicells and oral spines, and in the absence of avicularia ( Yang et al. 2018).