Jellyella eburnea

Jellyella eburnea (Hincks, 1891)

Fig. 4

Membranipora eburnea Hincks, 1891: 289, pl. 7, fig. 5.

Jellyella eburnea – Taylor & Monks 1997: 42, figs 1–2, 4–13, 16–19.

Material

MALAYSIA: MSL BRY008, Pantai Chenang, Langkawi, on plastic and glass bottles.

Description

Colony encrusting, multiserial, unilamellar (Fig. 4A, E). Ancestrula twinned. Autozooids subhexagonal, rounded distally, twice as long as wide, 0.52–0.67 mm long by 0.29–0.33 mm wide; zooidal boundaries marked by a fine fissure; opesia occupying nearly all frontal surface, roughly ovoidal; cryptocyst forming a narrow, crescent-shaped shelf at distal end of zooid (Fig. 4B); gymnocyst variably developed,

when well-developed folded into rucks or spines projecting over proximal and later margins of opesia (Fig. 4C); basal walls with large uncalcified window; intramural buds present but rare.

Remarks

This species was fully described by Taylor & Monks (1997) who made it the type species of the new genus Jellyella, noting the pan-oceanic, tropical to subtropical occurrence of J. eburnea as an encruster of floating shells of the squid Spirula, and occasionally of the living planktonic gastropod Janthina. The pseudoplanktonic ecology of J. eburnea has apparently ‘pre-adapted’ it to the colonization of floating anthropogenic debris, especially plastic objects (e.g., Moyano 2005) but also glass bottles (Fig. 4 D–E).