Acanthogorgiidae Gray, 1859

Horvath, Elizabeth Anne, 2019, A review of gorgonian coral species (Cnidaria, Octocorallia, Alcyonacea) held in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History research collection: focus on species from Scleraxonia, Holaxonia, and Calcaxonia - Part I: Introduction, species of Scleraxonia and Holaxonia (Family Acanthogorgiidae), ZooKeys 860, pp. 1-66 : 1

Family Acanthogorgiidae Gray, 1859

Diagnosis.

Axis purely horny (scleroprotein without calcareous deposits), dark-colored, predominantly black; very difficult to cut, with wide, hollow, cross-chambered central core. Coenenchyme very thin, polyps conspicuous, contractile, not retractile, completely covered with both straight and curved fusiform sclerites (forming, in appearance only, cylindrical calyces; no calyces actually present). Sclerites arranged in eight double rows, forming eight en chevron fields; no well-defined operculum; sclerites instead arranged as transverse ring and eight points of converging spindles on tentacle bases; thus, sclerites of polyps continuous with those of tentacular crown, latter being sharp spines arrayed conspicuously around top of polyp, with no intervening sclerite-free neck zone or transverse collaret. Consequently, no clear division between anthocodia and anthostele. Tentacles fold inward over oral disk. Predominant sclerites colorless, in form of prickly or warty spindles; sometimes, presence of three- and four-armed radiates.