Chorizocarpa Michaelsen, 1904

KOTT, PATRICIA, 2003, New syntheses and new species in the Australian Ascidiacea, Journal of Natural History 37 (13), pp. 1611-1653 : 1644

Genus Chorizocarpa Michaelsen, 1904 (Polyzoinae, Styelidae ) Chorizocarpa michaelseni (Sluiter, 1900)

Synstyela michaelseni Sluiter, 1900b: 110 .

Chorizocarpa michaelseni: Kott, 1985: 262 and synonymy.

Chorizocarpa guttata: Monniot, C. 1988: 175 .

Remarks. The species is known from Thursday I. (as Synstyela incrustans: Sluiter, 1895 ) and New Caledonia (as C. guttata: Monniot, 1988 ). It appears to be confined to tropical waters. Chorizocarpa guttata Michaelsen, 1904 type material (AM Y2012, which Michaelsen had on loan from the Australian Museum) and further specimens found mixed with the types of C. subfuscus (AM U272), were redescribed (Kott, 1985), confirming Michaelsen’s description. Chorizocarpa guttata (Michaelsen, 1904) is distinguished from C. michaelseni by its long, lobed, pyriform gonads, longer stomach, longer rectum and shorter gastric caecum.

Both Sluiter (1895) and Michaelsen (1904) had difficulty interpreting structures in these specimens which they found projecting from the body wall into the test. Michaelsen believed them to be gonads, although it is not clear that they are. His summary of the characters of this species (Michaelsen, 1904: 109) refers to a testis on the left and an ovary on the right. However, Monniot, C. (1988) found a compact, mulberry-like testis anterior to the gut loop on the left side of the body in zooids of one colony, and in the other colony a small sac-like ovary was present in a similar position.