Clytia paulensis

• Main Author: Calder, Dale R.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Cnidaria; Hydrozoa; Leptothecata; Campanulariidae; Clytia; Clytia paulensis; Antarctic; Blanco; Indian; Saint-Paul; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/5933965; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5933965

Clytia paulensis (Vanhöffen, 1910) Figs. 14h, i Campanularia paulensis Vanhöffen, 1910: 298, figs. 19a, b. Type locality. Île Saint-Paul, in the crater basin, shallow water (Vanhöffen 1910: 298). Material examined. Southwest Florida Shelf, outer shelf northwest of the Dry Tortugas, 25°16.83’N, 83°57.35’W, 127 m, on Lafoea coalescens, 03 August 1981, triangle dredge, several colony fragments, up to 2.5 cm high, without gonophores, coll. Continental Shelf Associates, ROMIZ B1742. Remarks. If they all belong to the same species, hydroid colonies reported under the binomen Clytia paulensis Vanhöffen, 1910 have a remarkable geographic distribution. Undescribed until its discovery just over a century ago in the crater basin of remote Île Saint-Paul in the southern Indian Ocean, the species was reported from Europe in 1919 (Stechow 1919: 45), from South Africa in 1923 (Stechow 1923a: 111), from Australia in 1924 (Stechow 1924: 69), from California in 1925 (Stechow 1925: 211), from eastern North America in 1971 (Calder 1971: 51), from Japan in 1995 (Hirohito 1995: 68), from eastern South America in 1997 (Grohmann et al. 1997: 231; Genzano & Zamponi 1997: 291; but not C. paulensis in Blanco 1968), and from western South America in 2007 (Galea 2007: 90). A report of the hydroid from the Antarctic (Naumov & Stepanjants 1972, as Obelia paulensis) is likely to have been based on a different species. Of particular interest, however, was the discovery of specimens in collections at the Natural History Museum, London, collected in 1899 by E.T. Browne from Devon, England (Cornelius 1982: 90; 1995b: 260). Those hydroids were not recognized as C. paulensis until 1978. Given initial misgivings about the identity of hydroids from Chesapeake Bay as C. paulensis, specimens were compared with colonies of the species from South Africa provided by N.A.H. Millard (Calder 1971). Overlap was found in length and width measurements of pedicels, hydrothecae, and gonothecae in materials from the two regions. American specimens tended to ...