Claraclippia Gooday & Holzmann, 2024

Holzmann, Maria, Barrenechea-Angeles, Inés, Lim, Swee-Cheng & Pawlowski, Jan, 2024, New xenophyophores (Foraminifera, Monothalamea) from the eastern Clarion-Clipperton Zone (equatorial Pacific), Zootaxa 5419 (2), pp. 151-188 : 165-166

Claraclippia Gooday & Holzmann gen. nov.

Diagnosis. Body partly attached, delicate, somewhat flexible. Distinct test absent although dusting of fine, loosely attached surficial particles present when freshly collected. Instead, body is composed largely of closely packed, branching stercomare branches (typically 100–150 µm diameter) that tend to fuse into more continuous sheets. Overall morphology complex but basically plate-like. A large irregular, three-dimensional structure with no obvious centre of organisation is formed by plate-like elements perforated by occasional small open spaces; in places, plates merge into bar-like elements that define larger open spaces.

Etymology. The name reflects the occurrence of the new genus in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

Remarks. The more or less naked body of Claraclippia is reminiscent of the genus Cerelasma , in which an agglutinated test is weakly developed or virtually absent ( Tendal, 1972). The main difference between the new genus and the three species included by Tendal (1972, 1996) in Cerelasma (the genotype C. gyrosphaera , C. lamellosa , and C. massa ) is that the test is larger with a basically plate-like structure compared to its relatively simple, ‘lumpy’, rounded shape in Cerelasma . The stercomare branches are also considerably narrower and much more numerous and densely packed in the new genus. A fourth species, Cerelasma implicata, recently described from the Russian license area in the central CCZ (Kamenskaya et al., 2017), is constructed from narrow, densely packed stercomare branches and granellare strands and therefore shows a greater morphological resemblance to Claraclippia . However, sequences have not been obtained from this or any other Ceralasma species and so their relationships, if any, to Claraclippia are unclear.