Aphanipathes Brook, 1889

Horowitz, Jeremy, Opresko, Dennis M., Gonzalez-Garcia, Maria del P. & Quattrini, Andrea M., 2023, Description of a new species of black coral in the family Aphanipathidae (Anthozoa, Antipatharia) from Puerto Rico, ZooKeys 1173, pp. 97-110 : 97

Genus Aphanipathes Brook, 1889

Diagnosis (emended).

Colony sparsely to densely, uniserial or irregularly branched, with elongate, straight, curved, or coiled, often ascending branches. Spines maximum 0.5 mm tall with pronounced tubercles. Polyps 1-2 mm in transverse diameter, with three to eight polyps per centimeter.

Type species.

Aphanipathes sarothamnoides Brook, 1889.

Type locality.

Vanuatu.

Remarks.

Brook (1889) erected the genus Aphanipathes to include the following five new species: Aphanipathes sarothamnoides Brook, 1889, Aphanipathes verticillata Brook, 1889, Aphanipathes alata Brook, 1889, Aphanipathes barbadensis Brook, 1889 and Aphanipathes cancellata (Brook, 1889), as well as eleven previously described nominal species: Antipathes eupteridea Lamouroux, 1824; Antipathes salix ( Pourtalès, 1880); Antipathes rigida Pourtalès, 1880; Antipathes fruticosa Gray, 1857; Antipathes pedata Gray, 1857; Antipathes pennacea Pallas, 1766; Antipathes filix Pourtalès, 1867; Antipathes wollastoni Gray, 1857; Antipathes humilis Pourtalès, 1867; Antipathes thyoides Pourtalès, 1880; and Antipathes abietina Pourtalès, 1874. The genus was revised to include only A. sarothamnoides (the type species) and A. salix , A. pedata and A. verticillata . Since then, a fifth species, Aphanipathes flailum Horowitz, 2022, has been added to the genus. All five species are branched, have polypar spines twice as large as the abpolypar spines, and possess distinct tubercles on the surfaces of polypar and abpolypar spines (Table 1 ). These species differ based on the density of tubercles on a visible lateral view of a given spine where A. salix has about five tubercles (which are also more knob-like than any other aphanipathids), A. flailum has about eight to 12 tubercles, A. sarothamnoides has about 15 tubercles, and A. pedata and A. verticillata have as many as 30 tubercles. Aphanipathes verticillata also has spines that form distinct verticils while all other species have spines in horizontal rows that form spirals. The phylogeny reconstructed in Horowitz et al. (2022) suggests that A. verticillata might be more closely related to the genus Pseudocirrhipathes ; A. salix has never been sequenced and the differences in the ornamentation on the spines could suggest that it belongs to a different genus, but confirmation requires comparison of molecular data from holotype or topotype material of each species in the genus to formally revise the group.