BEANIA 41I 



4. Beania inermis (Busk). 



Diachoris inermis Busk, 1852&, p. 54; 1854, pi. lxxii, figs. 1,2; 1879, p. 194; 1884, p. 60; Jullien, 

 1888, p. 73, pi. x, fig. 1 ; Kirchenpauer in Studer, 1889, p. 157. 



Beania inermis O'Donoghue and de Watteville, 1935, p. 208. 



Diachoris hyadesi Jullien, 1888, p. 74, pi. vii, figs. 1, 2. 



Beania hydesia Waters, 1904, p. 30, pi. i, fig. 7. 



? Beania hyadesi Calvet, 1909, p. 13. 



Station distribution. Sub- Antarctic : South Atlantic Ocean, Sts. WS 85, WS 88. 



Geographical distribution. Magellanic Region (Busk; Jullien; Waters); Patagonian Shelf 

 (U.S. National Museum; Discovery); John Adams Bank, off Brazil (99.7. 1 .912, 926); South Africa 

 (O'Donoghue and de Watteville); St Paul (Kirchenpauer); Kerguelen (Busk); Palmer Archipelago ? 

 (Calvet). 



I have been unable to trace any specimen on which Busk might have based his record 

 of this species from New Zealand (18526, p. 54), and Hutton (1873, p. 94, asterisk 

 explained on p. 1) listed it on Busk's authority without having seen specimens. I have 

 myself seen no specimen from New Zealand. 



From comparison of the original figures and descriptions, it appears that Beania 

 inermis (Busk) and B. hyadesi (Jullien) differ in the number of spines, which, as Waters 

 pointed out, might be due to the worn state of Busk's type specimen. The Discovery 

 material confirms this suggestion, both conditions being found in a single partially worn 

 colony from St. WS 85. Another colony from the same station, with the full complement 

 of small acute spines, has avicularia and rootlets as described by Waters. 1 The presence 

 of rootlets with branched tips is, however, not peculiar to this species. They have, for 

 example, been observed in B. hirtissima (Heller), B.fragilis (Ridley) and B. costata var. 

 maxilla (Jullien). 



The avicularia, described by Waters as situated on a slightly raised chamber on the 

 dorsal surface, prove to be stalked and attached to the border of the aperture just 

 distally to the distal lateral connecting tube, as in several other species of Beania, but 

 the stalk passes through the fenestra so that the avicularium projects on the basal surface 

 of the colony. The large swollen head could not have passed through the fenestra, and 

 the avicularium must have developed in this position. As usual in this genus the 

 colonies were not encrusting, but fixed by rootlets. They were growing on the surface 

 of other Polyzoa and as the rootlets were short the space between the colony and the 

 substratum was very narrow. The presence of large avicularia in this space is rather 

 surprising. 



The specimens from the John Adams Bank, off Brazil, have avicularia in the basal 

 position characteristic of the species, and, with their small and unevenly distributed 

 spines, much resemble the type. Avicularia are absent in O'Donoghue and de Watte- 

 ville 's South African material (1936.4.2.7) and from the single piece from Kerguelen 

 in the Challenger collection. Both specimens have irregularly distributed spines and 



1 Waters writes of the origin of the rootlet as proximal, but if the mandible points proximally, as in my 

 specimens, the rootlets in his figure are distal. 



