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Coccolithophora pelagica (Wallich) from the Channel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Extract
A small coccosphere occurs abundantly in centrifuged water samples from the Plymouth district, the western part of the Channel, and outwards towards the Irish Sea and the French coast. This agrees with the species described by Ostenfeld (1899) as Coccosphœra atlantica, from the North Atlantic, which Lohmann (1902) considers identical with Wallich's Coccosphœra pelagica (1877). Lohmann, therefore, unites the two species as Coccolithophora pelagica, and in this he is followed by Ostenfeld (1908), the generic name of Coccosphœra being preoccupied by Perty (1852) for a small green flagellate.
The chief difference between C. pelagica and C. atlantica is in the number of coccoliths (16 to 36 in the former, 10 to 17 in the latter). The overlapping of the margins of the Coccoliths in C. atlantica is another difference, but it appears likely from Wallich's drawings that he had only taken the inner margins into consideration, and, therefore, regarded the coccoliths of C. pelagica as not overlapping. His measurements, which cover an extensive range, embrace those of C. atlantica. It seems, therefore, that C. atlantica is to be regarded as the same species as C. pelagica, the coccoliths having a similar form, and that Lohmann and Ostenfeld are justified in bringing them together.
Coccolithophora pelagica thus includes Murray and Blackman's C. pelagica (1898), Huxley's “Coccospheres” (1868, Plate 4, Figs. 6, c, d, e, and 7, b and c), and Ostenfeld's C. atlantica (1899, 1900). The coccoliths described by Joly and Dixon (1897) and the coccospheres by Dixon (1900) from the Irish Sea also belong to this species.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , December 1923 , pp. 271 - 275
- Copyright
- Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 1923
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