; NOTES ON PHILIPPINE ALCYONARIA 



PART IV : NOTES ON PHILIPPINE STOLONIFERA AND XENIID^ 



By S. F. Light 



(From the Zoological Laboratory, College of Liberal Arts, 



University of the Philippines) 



While the littoral alcyonarian faunse of Zanzibar, Ternate, 

 Amboina, and of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes have 

 been studied by well-known scientists — Kiikenthal, Hickson, 

 Schenk, May, Thomson and Henderson, and others — the remark- 

 ably rich and varied fauna of the numberless shallow-water coral 

 reefs of the Philippine Archipelago seems almost entirely to have 

 been neglected. With the exception of the few littoral specimens 

 collected by the Challenger expedition at Mactan Island, near 

 Cebu, and at Zamboanga, Mindanao,^ and a few specimens 

 collected by Sanderson, Jagor, and Miiller,- the shallow-reef 

 Alcyonaria of the Philippine Islands have been practically un- 

 touched. The Alcyonaria collected by the United States Bureau 

 of Fisheries steamer Albatross in Philippine waters have not 

 been reported on, but it is to be expected that they will be mainly 

 deep-sea or deep-littoral forms. 



It is not strange, therefore, that we find but two species of the 

 suborder Stolonifera recorded from the Philippines: Tubipora 

 musica Linnasus, recorded by Wright and Studer ^ from Zam- 

 boanga, and Clavularia inflata Schenk var. luzoniana May, 

 reported by May ^ from Albay Province, Luzon, 



The alcyonarian collection of the University of the Philippines 

 is made up of Alcyonaria collected on the joint scientific expedi- 

 tions of the University of the Philippines and the Philippine 

 Bureau of Science to Port Galera Bay on the northern coast of 

 Mindoro and to Taytay Bay on the east coast of Palawan, of 

 many specimens collected by Griffin and Wharton in the Bantayan 

 Islands off the northwest coast of Cebu, of a large number of 

 specimens from the interisland cables in various localities and 



1 Wright, E. P., and Studer, Th., Report on the Alcyonaria collected by 

 H. M. S. Challenger during the years 1873-87. The voyage of H. M. S. 

 Challenger, Zoology. London (1889), 31, v-lxxii + 1-314, Pis. I-XLIL 



^ May, S. J., Beitrage zur Systematik der Alcyonaceen, Jena. Zeitschr. f. 

 Naturw. (1899), 33. 



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