Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:48:32.309Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On a New British Sea Anemone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

T. A. Stephenson
T. A. Stephenson
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University College, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is a curious fact that the majority of the British anemones had been discovered by 1860, and that half of them, as listed at that date, had been established during a burst of energy on the part of Gosse and his collecting friends. Gosse added 28 species to the British Fauna himself. It is still more surprising that since Gosse ceased work, no authentic new ones have been added, other than more or less offshore forms, with the exception of Sagartia lucice; and this species appears to have been imported from abroad. There is, however, an anemone which occurs on the Breakwater and Pier at Plymouth, which has not yet been described. Dr. Allen tells me it has been on the Breakwater as long as he can remember, and to him I am indebted for the details of its habitat given further on. Whether it occurs elsewhere than in the Plymouth district and has been seen but mistaken for the young of Metridium dianthus, is as yet unknown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1925 , pp. 880 - 890
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 1925

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* Since the above was written, Mr. Evans tells me he has seen the Breakwater anemone stretch out a few tentacles to a great length, far beyond the others, and search about its environment with them; these tentacles, after they were contracted again, were thick, short, blunt and opaque. This doubtless accounts for the thick orange tentacles seen in some of my specimens. A similar phenomenon is well known in certain other anemones. Mr. Evans adds that when the Breakwater anemone contracts in alarm, the body often jerks down in a very characteristic way, one side generally contracting more than the other, so that the animal collapses corkscrew-wise and ends up lop-sided. I have noticed the same sort of thing.

* Mena has been shown by Carlgren to lack acontia, and is thus a Halcampid. Arkiv for Zoologi, Bd. 17A, NO. 21, Stockholm, 1925, p. 1; see p. 8.

* Fig. 1 C is a tracing of Gosse's copy of a coloured drawing sent to him by Cocks, natural size.