Thesea Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860

Carpinelli, Ágatha Nascimento, Cordeiro, Ralf Tarciso Silva, Castro, Clovis Barreira & Kitahara, Marcelo Visentini, 2022, Thesea pyrrha sp. nov., a new shallow-water octocoral (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) from southwestern Atlantic, and implications on the systematics of the genus, Zootaxa 5116 (1), pp. 89-106 : 96

Genus Thesea Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860

Thesea Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860: 18 .— Bayer, 1961: 91.— Deichmann, 1936: 110–123 [in part: not T. plana (= Lytreia)]; 1959: 14–17.— Wirshing et al., 2005: fig. 1E– F (in part: not Pacific specimens fig. 1G–H).—Breedy & Guzman, 2018: 1517.

Filigella Gray, 1868: 443–444.

Not Thesea, Verrill, 1869: 428–429 (= Swiftia).

Not Thesea, Nutting 1910: 50–51 .

Not Thesea, Riess, 1929: 401 .

Type and type-locality. Thesea guadalupensis ( Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860) , by monotypy. Guadeloupe, Southern Caribbean.

Diagnosis. Colonies slightly planar to bushy, laterally or pinnately branched without branch anastomosis. Branches long and ascending. Coenenchyme thin to moderately thick (compared to other plexaurids). Outer layer granulose and thicker than axial sheath. Coenenchymal layers sometimes indistinct in species with thinner branches. Polyp mounds slightly raised to prominent and longitudinally arranged, with eight marginal lobes with covering sclerites. Coenenchymal sclerites large, rugose plates with outer undulate appearance and inner irregular warty spindles.Axial sheath mostly with smaller spindles.Anthocodia with curved rods arranged in points, with a few rods at base, without a clearly differentiated collaret. Color of the colonies, white, light-yellow, red, pink, and various hues of orange (adapted from Breedy & Gúzman, 2018a).