Lepralia pedicularis Stoliczka 1862
Creators: name: Zágoršek, Kamil
name: Gordon, Dennis P.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Bryozoa
Gymnolaemata
Cheilostomatida
Bryocryptellidae
Lepralia
Lepralia pedicularis

description: “ Lepralia pedicularis Stoliczka, 1862 ” nomen dubium
(Fig. 4B)
Lepralia pedicularis Stoliczka, 1862: 84, pl. 2, fig. 2.
MATERIAL EXAMINED. — Holotype of Lepralia pedicularis, registered as 1862/0022/0053.
DESCRIPTION
Colony robust, erect, bifurcating, exteriorly heavily secondarily calcified and rather densely perforated by tiny pores, some of which are in linear series. Obvious autozooecial boundaries are lacking although very thin, faint lines may be indicative; no other exterior features are visible. Interior view of a fracture shows parts of several elongate zooecial chambers with undersides of mixed frontal shields excluding orifices; each shows the internal openings of sparsely scattered lepralioid pseudopores and a small oval umbonuloid area of planar-spherulitic microstructure, bounded by a ring scar and in the centre of which is a foramen. Interzooecial communications via simple, uniporous pore.
REMARKS
Ŋe internal opening surrounded by a small umbonuloid area of exterior skeletal wall is highly distinctive. Ŋe only other known example at the present time is a species of Siphonicytara (Gordon & Taylor in press), from the Early Eocene of Chatham Island, New Zealand, which has an identical arrangement. Insofar as all other examined species of Siphonicytara Busk, 1884 have an ascopore, Gordon & Taylor interpreted the foramen as technically a spiraminal opening and that the genus evolved from a fully umbonuloid ancestor, perhaps resembling Beisselina Canu, 1913.
Lepralia pedicularis need not have belonged to a family Siphonicytaridae, however. Members of this monogeneric family were rooted in soft sediments and no known species has the same degree of robust secondary calcification. Adeonidae is a much more likely family, members of which include wholly umbonuloid and wholly lepralioid frontal shields;no species has yet been found with a skeletally mixed shield but it is highly likely that such species exist. Based on external appearance, similar colonies are produced by several genera in Miocene of the Paratethys. Ŋe most similar is the non-spiraminate adeonid Schizostomella grinzingensis David & Pouyet, 1974, the branches of which are often heavily calcified proximally, gradually obliterating apertures and just leaving scattered pores and thin zooecial boundary lines as in L. pedicularis. Similarly, spiraminate fossil Reptadeonella cf. violacea (Johnston, 1847), as described by Zágoršek (2010), also produced heavily calcified parts of multilamellar colonies in which some orifices and spiramina become almost completely obliterated. Species of Reptadeonella, however, are all encrusting. Our conclusion is that Lepralia pedicularis is a presently indeterminable genus of adeonid and the species is nomen dubium.
description: Published as part of Zágoršek, Kamil & Gordon, Dennis P., 2014, Revision of the Oligocene bryozoan taxa described by Stoliczka (1862), with the description of a new genus of Bryocryptellidae, pp. 541-564 in Geodiversitas 36 (4) on page 552, DOI: 10.5252/g2014n4a3, http://zenodo.org/record/4538596