NOAA Okeanos Explorer
Info
Trachythela rudis is a pretty, small soft coral that lives at depths to 2200 meters on rocky substrates and forms crustose colonies.
Its polyps are hydroid-like and are often fully retracted.
It occurred as an epizoic on a skeleton of Primnoa resedaeformis and on dead stems of the deep-sea bamboo coral Keratoisis grayi Wright, 1869 (formerly called Keratoisis ornata).
Large group was also found on Paragorgia arhorea.
Polyps of the soft coral are usually characterized by a basal crust covered by a skin, but spiny, but not infrequently by narrow creeping stolons.
They may be solitary, but are often grouped in twos or threes, or form dense nodules 8 to 10 mm high.
Numerous smaller spines are present in the tentacles up to near the tips and in the pinnules.
Trachythela rudis has been reported from fishing banks off Newfoundland.
Synonym: Clavularia rudis (Verrill, 1922).
Its polyps are hydroid-like and are often fully retracted.
It occurred as an epizoic on a skeleton of Primnoa resedaeformis and on dead stems of the deep-sea bamboo coral Keratoisis grayi Wright, 1869 (formerly called Keratoisis ornata).
Large group was also found on Paragorgia arhorea.
Polyps of the soft coral are usually characterized by a basal crust covered by a skin, but spiny, but not infrequently by narrow creeping stolons.
They may be solitary, but are often grouped in twos or threes, or form dense nodules 8 to 10 mm high.
Numerous smaller spines are present in the tentacles up to near the tips and in the pinnules.
Trachythela rudis has been reported from fishing banks off Newfoundland.
Synonym: Clavularia rudis (Verrill, 1922).
