A Revision of the Stylasteridae (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa, Filifera) from Alaska and Adjacent Waters
Author
Cairns, Stephen D.
Author
Lindner, Alberto
text
ZooKeys
2011
158
1
88
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.158.1910
journal article
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.158.1910
1313-2970-158-1
Genus
Errinopora Fisher, 1931
Errinopora
Fisher, 1931: 397;
1938
: 536.-
Boschma 1956
: F102;
1957
: 57.-
Cairns 1983a
: 123;
1983b
: 462. -
Lindner 2005
: 79-88.
Protoerrina
Broch, 1935: 59;
1936
: 99-100.
Diagnosis.
(emended from
Lindner 2005
): Colonies uniplanar to slightly bushy; branches round, elliptical, or lamellar in cross section, often robust with blunt tips. Coenosteal texture reticulate-spinose (with wide slits resulting in a spongy texture) or reticulate-granular; exterior surface of dactylopore spines usually inconspicuously longitudinally ridged; coenosteum orange, pink, and white. One species,
Errinopora cestoporina
, bears numerous perforated mounds on surface. Dactylopores dimorphic, the most common, termed the primary dactylopore spine, is U-shaped and usually robust (thick-walled), occurring randomly, in pseudocyclosystems, or often laterally fusing to form rows or taller terraces that flank rows of gastropores. When dactylopore spines flank both sides of a gastropore row and their dactylotomes are directed toward the gastropores it is termed bilateral or distichoporine; if only one row of spines flank a row of gastropores, then unilateral. If isolated, dactylotomes usually abcauline in orientation. Much smaller flush dactylopores, termed secondary dactylopores, which lack dactylostyles, commonly scattered over coenosteum of many species. Dactylostyles usually well developed, easily seen from external view. Secondary dactylopores much smaller, flush with coenosteum, and lack styles. Gastropores also dimorphic, the primary gastropores being circular in outline, flush with coenosteum (having no lip), and arranged in irregular vertical rows, short horizontal rows, or randomly. Tabulae and ring palisades absent. Gastrostyles lanceolate, covered with longitudinal or oblique, spiny ridges. Smaller secondary gastropores much smaller, having only a small gastrostyle or none at all. Female ampullae superficial hemispheres, often without an obvious efferent pore. Male ampullae usually smaller hemispheres and spongy.
Discussion.
The ten species in this genus are differentiated and compared in both a dichotomous key (see below) and tabular key (Table 1); six of them occur exclusively in the Aleutian Islands. Another species was tentatively assigned to this genus by
Cairns (1983b)
,
Errinopora lobata
(Nielsen, 1919), a Paleocene fossil from Denmark. This species was re-examined by
Bernecker and Weidlich (1990
,
2005
), based on subsequently collected non-type material from the Faske Formation in Denmark. They noted that whereas the dactylopore spines were typical of
Errina
or
Errinopora
, the spines did not contain dactylostyles, and thus resembled
Errina
more than
Errinopora
. We have examined the holotype of
Labiopora lobata
Nielsen, 1919 (GM1782), which is a uniplanar colony 10.2 cm tall and 8.0 cm wide, with branches about 0.5 cm in diameter embedded within a
Dendrophyllia
matrix. The colony has pores, or broken bulges, of three sizes: small and elongate (75-110
µm
in width), medium and round to somewhat quadratic (0.3-0.53 mm wide), and large, round or somewhat triangular
(
up to 1.7 mm). The former are quite shallow and probably the result of a reticulate coenosteal surface, whereas the medium-sized pores are deep and possibly represent the gastropores, one of which has a cyclosystem-like structure 1.9 mm in diameter. The largest pores appear to be ruptured ampullae. None of them, however, resemble dactylopore spines like those reported by Nielsen (1919) or
Bernecker and Weidlich (1990
,
2005
), suggesting that the species reported by the latter authors is neither
Errina
nor
Errinopora
. Likewise, the lack of dactylopore spines in the type of
Labiopora lobata
precludes it from being
Errinopora
, and thus we currently suggest an incertae sedis placement of this species until further analysis.
Species within
Errinopora
are unique with the
Stylasteridae
in having both dimorphic gastro- and dactylopores, a condition first noted by
Fisher (1938)
for three Alaskan species but interpreted exclusively as secondary dactylopores. Careful examination of longitudinal sections of several of these pores reveal that they contain not dactylostyles, but rather small gastrostyles. This implies that most species of
Errinopora
(all but
Errinopora fisheri
and
Errinopora cestoporina
Cairns, 1983, see Table 1) have two types of gastrozooids (feeding polyps), a unique case for stylasterids but previously reported for the hydractiniids
Stylactaria conchicola
(see
Namikawa et al. 1992
). Secondary gastropores differ from primary gastropores in being narrower and deeper, and in having only a minute or no gastrostyle. All but one species (
Errinopora fisheri
, see Table 1) also have dimorphic dactylopores: a large type surrounded by a prominent horseshoe-shaped spine, and smaller, flush pores only 40-110
µm
in diameter, which do not have dactylostyles and are termed secondary dactylopores.
In comparison to other stylasterid genera,
Errinopora
is most similar to
Gyropora
Boschma, 1960, whose only species,
Gyropora africana
Boschma, 1960, has dactylopore spines and gastropores coordinated in pore rows, as in some species of
Errinopora
.
Errinopora
is also similar to
Errina
Gray, 1835 and
Errinopsis
Broch, 1935, whose species may also have thick-walled dactylopore spines. None of these genera, however, include species with dactylostyles, as in
Errinopora
. Among genera with species having dactylostyles, only species of
Errinopora
,
Inferiolabiata
Broch, 1951, and
Paraerrina
Broch, 1942 lack a coordination of gastropores and dactylopores in well-developed cyclosystems (whereas species of
Stenohelia
Kent, 1870,
Stylantheca
Fisher, 1931,
Stylaster
Gray, 1831 and
Calyptopora
Boschma, 1968 do have both dactylostyles and well-developed cyclosystems).
Inferiolabiata
differs from
Errinopora
in many characters, in particular by having thin-walled dactylopore spines (instead of thick-walled) that are markedly truncated at the tip (instead of rounded), whereas
Paraerrina
Broch, 1942 differs in having delicate dactylostyles (instead of robust) and either flush or only slightly raised dactylopore spines-instead of tall and robust (Cairns 1984,
1991
).
Errinopora
is also one of the few stylasterid genera with species having calcitic, rather than aragonitic, colonies (
Thompson and Chow 1955
,
Lowenstam 1964
,
Cairns and Macintrye 1992
). The only other stylasterid genera with species known to have mostly calcitic colonies are
Errinopsis
,
Errina
, and one species of
Stylaster
-
Stylaster verrillii
(Dall, 1884) (see
Cairns and Macintrye 1992
). Within
Errinopora
, only
Errinopora cestoporina
, known solely from the
Subantarctic
Region, is known to have coralla formed by precipitation of aragonite. This result confirms the more general observation of the prevalence of calcitic stylasterids in the North Pacific (
Cairns and Macintrye 1992
), possibly related to the shallower depth of the Aragonite Saturation Horizon (ASH) in the Region (Guinotte et al. 2006).
In an attempt to investigate phylogenetic relationships, 37 partial mitochondrial rDNA 16S sequences were obtained for the six species of
Errinopora
from the Aleutian Islands, including the holotypes of
Errinopora dichotoma
,
Errinopora disticha
,
Errinopora fisheri
and
Errinopora undulata
. Based on
Lindner et al. (2008)
included
Errinopora nanneca
(specimen USNM1027820) and
Errinopora zarhyncha
Fisher, 1938 (specimen USNM1071915), and shows that these species diverged only about 4 million years ago. Moreover, the same study shows that
Cyclohelia lamellata
Cairns, 1991 and
Distichopora borealis
Fisher, 1938, two sympatric Alaskan stylasterids that are also clearly distinguishable with marked morphological differences (see above), may have diverged as recently as 1 million years ago. These results indicate that part of stylasterid species diversity in Alaska may have diverged only within the past 1-4 million years and, at least for
Errinopora
, the results presented herein show that despite the marked morphological differences, some species are not recovered as reciprocally monophyletic lineages (
Baum and Shaw 1995
,
Avise 2000
) using mitochondrial rDNA 16S.
Type species.
Errina pourtalesii
Dall, 1884, by original designation.
Distribution.
North Pacific: Aleutian Islands, Kurile Islands, Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of Japan, off California. Subantarctic: off Tierra del Fuego, 40-658 m.
Table 1. Tabular Key of the Ten Species of
Errinopora
(pscs = pseudocyclsosystems)
i
Errinopora fisher
|
a
Errinopora cestoporin
|
a
Errinopora porifer
|
a
Errinopora undulat
|
a
Errinopora distich
|
i
Errinopora pourtalesi
|
a
Errinopora stylifer
|
a
Errinopora zarhynch
|
a
Errinopora nannec
|
a
Errinopora dichotom
|
Dactylopore Spines |
Corallum |
Other Characters |
Key to the Recent species of Errinopora (bold face = occurs off Alaska)
Errinopora
fisheri
|
Errinopora cestoporina
|
Errinopora porifera
|
Errinopora undulata
|
Errinopora nanneca
|
Errinopora disticha
|
Errinopora pourtalesii
|
Errinopora stylifera
|
Errinopora zarhyncha
|
Errinopora nanneca
|
Errinopora dichotoma
|
Figure
4. Midpoint rooting phylogeny of the Alaskan species of
Errinopora
estimated using mitochondrial rDNA 16S sequences. Numbers at nodes are the result of 100 bootstrap pseudoreplicates whenever>70. Shown is one of six most parsimonious trees (length: 38; CI: 0.868). Numbers preceded by
'USNM'
represent specimen catalog numbers at the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Numbers preceded by
'EU'
or
'JN'
represent GenBank accession numbers. Asterisks (*) indicate the two specimens and rDNA 16S sequences of
Errinopora nanneca
and
Errinopora zarhyncha
previously published by
Lindner et al. (2008)
.