Tanyostea, Lapointe & Watling, 2022

Lapointe, Abby & Watling, Les, 2022, Towards a revision of the bamboo corals (Octocorallia): Part 5, new genera and species of Keratoisididae from the Tasmanian deep sea, Zootaxa 5168 (2), pp. 137-157 : 153

Tanyostea new genus

Diagnosis. Colony a curved, unbranched whip. Polyps contain eight long, individual tentacular needles that form a distinctive V-shape surrounding the tentacles, with very few sclerites in the polyp basal section. The axis is covered by a thick coenenchyme. The polyp body consists of two parts, which may be separated by a conspicuous bend in the body midway along the length. The tentacles contain long, thin rods, and sclerites of the pharynx are elongated.

Type species. Tanyostea wolverini new species, by monotypy

Remarks. The segmented polyp body, bending abaxially, and the V-shaped arrangement of intertentacular sclerites are unique characters attributed to this genus. As noted by Watling et al. (2022) unbranched colonies occur in several clades of the Keratoisididae . This new genus, Tanyostea , is representative of clade C1 ( Fig. 2 ), all the known members of which are characterized by having unbranched colonies.

Etymology. The genus name is based on the Greek adjective tany = long, and the noun osteon = bone, a reference to the long internodes of the axial skeleton that characterize the type species.

Figures

FIGURE 2. Cladogram of the Keratoisididae modified from Watling et al. (2022). New taxa added in this paper are in bold lettering. Bootstrap values>50 are shown above the nodes and Bayesian probability values>0.5 are shown below the nodes. Major clades are referred to by the designation along the right side of the cladogram.