Bergia Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860

Low, Martyn E. Y., Sinniger, Frederic & Reimer, James Davis, 2016, The order Zoantharia Rafinesque, 1815 (Cnidaria, Anthozoa: Hexacorallia): supraspecific classification and nomenclature, ZooKeys 641, pp. 1-80 : 15

Bergia Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860

Bergia Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860: 54.

Type species.

Bergia catenularis Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860, by subsequent designation by Duerden (1903: 496).

Gender.

Feminine.

Diagnosis.

“… can be distinguished from all other zoantharians including Parazoanthus spp., Umimayanthus spp. and Epizoanthus spp. by a unique deletion of 60 bp (from position 133 to 192 in our alignment) and several consecutive base substitutions in the 16S-rDNA region. These characters clearly separate this genus from all other genera inside the family Parazoanthidae , as well as from the genus Epizoanthus " ( Montenegro et al. 2015a: 68).

Remarks.

Long considered to be a junior subjective synonym of Parazoanthus Haddon & Shackelton, 1891, recent molecular and morphological work by Montenegro et al. (2015a) have shown that the type species, Bergia catenularis Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860, represents a generic-level monophyly and resurrected the genus-group name Bergia Duchassaing de Fonbressin & Michelotti, 1860, for this grouping.

This genus-grouping currently contains three species all found in the Atlantic Ocean, although there is evidence of undescribed species in the Pacific Ocean ( Montenegro et al. 2015a: 68).

Examined species in this genus-grouping have either branchiform endodermal or simplified mesogleal sphincter muscles ( Swain et al. 2015).