The Genus Grasshoffia with the Description of a New Deep-water Species from the Northern Philippines (Octocorallia: Pennatulacea: Virgulariidae)

摘要

A new species of the recently described pennatulacean genus Grasshoffia, collected by beam trawl, is described from deep-water off southern Luzon in the Philippines. The new species is here allocated to the genus Grasshoffia based on the presence of numerous minute rod-like sclerites in the polyp walls and polyp leaves. The sclerites in the new species are distinctive in that they are more-or-less rectangular in shape with truncate apexes, unlike the type species of the genus, as well as other species of pennatulaceans. The two species of Grasshoffia are known only from widely disparate regions of the world - the Gulf of Guinea in eastern Atlantic and the Philippine Archipelago in the western Pacific.