39 Pachycerianthus nobilis (Haddon & Shackleton, 1893)

Cerianthus nobilis Haddon and Shackleton, 1893: 116, 118; Carlgren 1896: 174; Haddon 1898: 400-401; Pax 1910: 167

Pachycerianthus nobilis: Molodtsova 2000: 19; Molodtsova 2007: 133; Stampar et al. 2014b: 350, 352

Type locality.

Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia.

Distribution.

Queensland and Northern Territory, Australia, New Caledonia, shallow waters.

Remarks.

A large species originally described from northeastern Australia as Cerianthus nobilis . This description is very simple and was based only on external characters and there have been no further studies based on specimens from this area. Molodtsova (2000, 2007) correctly suggest that this species does not belong to the genus Cerianthus, but to the genus Pachycerianthus . The relation with two species described by Carter (1995) ( P. delwynae and P. longistriatus) is completely unknown, however, there is the possibility that all three species are, in fact, a single one, based on their overlapping morphological characters.

Type material.

Museum of Zoology (University of Cambridge) - I.33575.A-B (holotype).