Ellisella Gray, 1857

Castro, C. B., Medeiros, M. S. & Loiola, L. L., 2010, Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) from Brazilian reefs, Journal of Natural History 44 (13 - 14), pp. 763-827 : 814-815

Genus Ellisella Gray, 1857

Diagnosis

Elliselid species with tall, flagelliform or bifurcating colonies, in this case with many long, often whip-like terminal branches; spindle- or rod-shaped sclerites only moderately, if at all, longer than the predominant double heads (emended from Bayer and Grasshoff 1995: 633, to include unbranched colonies).

Type species

Gorgonia elongata Pallas, 1766 by subsequent designation: Nutting, 1910 (apud Bayer 1956; Bayer and Grasshoff 1995).

Remarks

The species included in the genus Ellisella Gray, 1857 were previously distributed among several genera. Simpson (1910: 275–278, 307–360) put these genera into synonymy, taking as senior and valid Scirpearia Cuvier, 1817 , although recognizing that there were doubts regarding the identity of the material studied by Cuvier. Bayer (1955: 214–215), using the same arguments as Simpson (1910), reviewed the taxonomic positions of the genus and defined as senior and valid Ellisella Gray, 1857 . Later, Bayer and Grasshoff (1994), in a revision of the Ellisellidae , assigned the genus as a subgenus of Ctenocella Valenciennes, 1855 . Grasshoff (1999) abandoned the subgeneric classification of Bayer and Grasshoff (1994), returning to the pre-1994 situation.

Bayer and Grasshoff (1994) separated Ellisella and Viminella Gray, 1870 based only on a number of ramifications (identical diagnoses, except for this character). The former would have “colonies with several or many long, whiplike branches”, while the latter would have colonies “flagelliform, unbranched and whiplike or at most with one or a few long, whiplike branches”. However, our series of specimens includes colonies from unbranched to with up to several (> 10), long, whip-like branches. Therefore, it seems inappropriate to separate these genera at this time.