Genus Moseria

Totton, 1965

Very thin, flimsy nectophores with straight radial canals. Involucrum covers cnidoband of unicornuate tentilla. Very little is known about the species of this genus. The first species to be described was Moseria convoluta (Moser, 1925) based on some young material, with a pneumatophore of peculiar construction. Totton (1965) enhanced the earlier description, including a new description of the tentillum, as he believed that that described by Moser (1925) belonged to another species. Margulis (1977b) described a new species, Moseria similis, based mainly on a difference in the number of cavities in the pneumatophore. However, as this gas-filled structure usually explodes when the specimen is brought to the surface, and the gas forced down the stem, the number of cavities may be totally misleading. It is not clear, therefore, whether Moseria similis is a distinct species. There also appears to be another Moseria species in the Southern Ocean (see Pagès et al., 1994; Pugh et al., 1997) but it has yet to be described. In the area under consideration there are records only for Moseria similis and Moseria sp. nov. and these will be considered together as Moseria spp.

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