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A collection of pennatulaceans from ten cruises, acquired between 1982 and 1989 from off the western African coast comprises ca. 350 specimens of 13 species. One of the cruise is from the Gulf of Guinea and eight from the Southeast Atlantic. Fifty-four stations were sampled from depths of 91-1112 m. One previously undescribed species in the genus Stylatula is reported and described as new from samples collected from the Namibian continental shelf. Considering these collections, and previous records, the pennatulaceans in the western African region show biogeographic affinities with three geographic areas: West Africa (55.5% of the species), which comprises the Canary, Gulf of Guinea, and Benguela regions; the North Atlantic (3.7% of the species), which represents the more widespread Atlantic taxa; and Cape Endemic (7.4% of the species), which comprises the southern African region.
This visit was supported bay the "Dirección General de Universidades, Junta de Andalucía". Part of the material of S. elegans consulted in this paper was provided by the BIOICE project. We express our gratitude to Drs Gudmundur Vidir, Gudmundur Gudmundsson, and the staffs of the BIOICE project for making possible the study of the BIOICE octocoral material at the Sandgerdi Marine Centre in Iceland. One of us (PJL-G) acknowledges financial support for a visit to Marine Centre (Iceland) under the EC-funded TMR BIOICE Large-Scale Facility Programme.
Peer reviewed