Order STAUROMEDUSAE Haeckel, 1880

Museums

Regional Maps

• Mills, C.E. 1999. Stauromedusae: list of all valid species names. Electronic internet document available at http://faculty.washington.edu/cemills/Staurolist.html. Published by the author, web page established October 1999, last updated 2 December 2000. 1 pp. [1]

Introduction

There are approximately 50 known species of Stauromedusae worldwide, divided into five families, the Depastridae Haeckel (1880), the Kishinouyeidae Uchida (1929), the Kyopodiidae Larson (1988), the Lipkeidae Vogt (1887), and the Lucernariidae Johnston (1847) (see Mills 1999). Two of these families are represented in Australian waters, the Depastridae and the Lucernariidae.

Two primary groupings of Stauromedusae have been variously recognised, the Cleistocarpida and the Eleutherocarpida. Clark (1863) recognised these as families, as did Mayer (1910: 519), Carlgren (1935), Kramp (1961b: 292), Corbin (1978), and Hirano (1986). As noted by Gwilliam (1956), because the genera Cleistocarpus and Eleutherocarpus do not exist, these are not teneble as families. Gwilliam raised these families to suborders, and this convention has been followed by recent authors (Larson 1988; Mills, 1999).

Currently, only two species of Stauromedusae have been reported in Australian waters, namely, Depastromorpha africana Carlgren (1935) and Stenoscyphus inabai (Kishinouye, 1893). Without doubt, additional species will be found by the keen observer among the algae of the temperate waters, the coral outcrops of the Great Barrier Reef, and the deep-sea hydrothermal vents off Tasmania.

Diagnosis

Sessile Cnidaria with a polypoid, goblet- or trumpet-shaped body that flares at the oral end into a broad concave subumbrella and tapers aborally into a long or short stalk or peduncle, absent in a few cases. The end of the stalk or center of the exumbrella if the stalk is lacking bears an adhesive disk by which the animals attach to seaweeds, shells, rocks, etc., in polyp fashion. There are a four-cornered mouth with small oral lobes, and a short quadrangular manubrium. Between manubrium and margin four deep subumbrellar funnels sink into the interior. The margin may be circular, bearing tentacles, but typically is drawn out into eight (or four bifurcated) adradial arms or lobes, each tipped with a bunch of short capitate tentacles, numbering 20 or 30 to hundreds. On the exumbrellar side of the margin, halfway between the lobes, i.e., on the per- and interradii, are borne the eight rhopalioid marginal bodies, which are simply reduced tentacles, lacking any special sensory character.

Diagnosis References

Hyman, L. H. 1940. Stauromedusae or Lucernariida. pp. 508-512 in Hyman, L. H. (ed.). The Invertebrates. Protozoa through Ctenophora. New York : McGraw-Hill Vol. 1. [508]

General References

Hyman, L. H. 1940. Stauromedusae or Lucernariida. pp. 508-512 in Hyman, L. H. (ed.). The Invertebrates. Protozoa through Ctenophora. New York : McGraw-Hill Vol. 1.

Mayer, A.G. 1910. Medusae of the World. Vol. 1 and 2, The Hydromedusae. Vol. 3, The Scyphomedusae. Washington, D.C. : Carnegie Institution 735 pp., 76 pls. [reprinted by A. Asher & Co., 1977]

Mills, C.E. 1999. Stauromedusae: list of all valid species names. Electronic internet document available at http://faculty.washington.edu/cemills/Staurolist.html. Published by the author, web page established October 1999, last updated 2 December 2000. 1 pp.

History of changes