Order Alcyonacea Research Articles

Feeding behaviour and feeding ecology of the Octocorallia (Coelenterata: Anthozoa)

The feeding behaviour of some 30 species of Octocorallia was examined in the laboratory and in the field. All of the species from the Orders–Alcyonacea, Gorgonacea, Stolonifera and Telestacea, appear to have a common, basic feeding strategy. Fine particulate matter and zooplankton were captured in a raptorial manner by the tentacles and pinnules. Upon capture of food particles, the tentacles were flexed rapidly inwards and closed or wiped across the mouth. At the same time the mouth opened and ingestion was accomplished by directional ciliary currents in the mouth and the pharynx. Food capture by means of mesenterial filaments, mucus strands or ciliary currents was not observed. The examination of gut contents of Alcyonacea showed that they feed upon zooplankton. Epibenthic copepods from the demersal coral reef zooplankton were an important element of the diet of alcyonaceans.

Australian Octocorallia (Coelenterata).

This paper presents a taxonomic treatment of four Australian collections of octocorals belonging to the orders Stolonifera, Telestacea, and Alcyonacea. The four collections are located in the Australian Museum, Sydney, the Department of Fisheries, Adelaide, the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, and the Fisheries Laboratory, Queensland Fisheries Service, Mourilyan Harbour, Queensland. The material contains 67 species, 20 being found in Australian waters for the first time. Forty-five are known species, but nine of these are more or less completely redescribed. Twenty-two species are new, including eight new species of Capnella. A key to the species of this genus is given.

Societies and Academies

LONDON. Linnean Society, Feb. 16.—E. Heron-Allen: On the further researches of Joseph Jackson Lister, F.R.S., F.L.S., upon the reproductive processes of Polystomella crispa (Linn.). At the time when the late J. J. Lister's paper on the production of microspheric young by the conjugation of flagellispores emanating from the megalospheric form of P. crispa and other Foraminifera (read in 1894) was in process of publication, he was engaged at Plymouth in further researches, as a result of which he was enabled to establish the production of megalospheric young by viviparity in the microspheric form. He left a succinct account of his work in MS., which was read by Mr. Heron-Allen.—M. A. C. Hinton: False killer-whales (Pseudorca crassidens) in the Dornoch Firth. The school which entered the Dornoch Firth last October was a large one. Most of the whales were carefully measured, their stomach-contents examined, and parasites, internal and external, collected; practically all the females were dissected for information as to breeding. With the help of local labour the whales were flensed, and the skeletons prepared and dispatched to the Natural History Museum. A full-grown bull and a large cow were sent entire to London, where plaster casts were made from them. Numerous dissections have been made and 143 skeletons collected and cleaned.—Mrs. L. Hunter: Alcyonaria of the Abrolhos Islands. There are twenty-four species, eight of which are new and nine of which are represented by new varieties. Representatives of the order Alcyonacea predominate, the majority being species of the Nephthyidae. The orders Stolonifera and Gorgonacea are represented, but Heliopora, usually abundant on other coral reefs of the Indian Ocean, is absent. The creeping membrane in the specimens of Xenia provides a link between the orders Stolonifera and Alcyonacea. The three species of Eunephthya supply a link between the lobose members of the Alcyoniidse and the tree-like forms of the Nephthyidae. The spicules found on Sarcodictyon tropicale, the first species of the genus to be recorded in warm waters, are of remarkable interest, since it has incorporated in some way the silicious spicules of the tetractinellid sponge upon which the specimen is creeping.

X. On the Genus Lemnalia, Gray; with an Account of the Branching-systems of the Order Alcyonacea.

X. On the Genus Lemnalia, Gray; with an Account of the Branching-systems of the Order Alcyonacea.