Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer 1889

Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer, 1889

Figure 8

Acanella chiliensis Wright & Studer, 1889: 31, pl. IX, fig 3.

Type: Collected via dredge. Station 301, in the Messier Channel, Patagonia, Chile. 175 fathoms depth. Indicated as deposited in the Natural History Museum, London; however we were not able to verify the location of the type specimen at the time of this publication.

For description see: Wright & Studer 1889

Remarks: The specimens represented by Haplotype C (Figure 8) have 5̄ 7 mm tall polyps with curved, slightly club-shaped sclerites with spine-like projections, which corresponds with the species description of A. chiliensis as described in Wright and Studer (1889). A. chiliensis is the only valid species within the genus that has club-shaped sclerites. Published reports of A. chiliensis appear only once, a collection from the eastern South Pacific (Messier Channel, Patagonia, Chile) at 320 m depth; our samples thus expand the known distribution of the species to the western South Pacific and Indian Ocean (New Zealand-Kermadec [n=5] and Indian [n=1] deep-sea provinces; Watling et al. 2013) and the depth range to 1195 m.

Distribution: South Pacific and Indian Ocean, 320̄ 1195 m depth.