Millepora: what's in a name (or a picture)

"Millepora"---just a quick note here on violence done to Millepora spp. names and pictures by Sydney Hickson, and by history.

This genus has been treated poorly. Professor Richard Randall at the UOG Marine Lab had few if any kind words for Hickson, the Don of Invertebrate Zoology at Cambridge, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century. In particular, Hickson decided that all species of Millepora spp. were synonyms of Millepora alcycornis. Somehow, either because of this fiasco, or for whatever reason, the name "Millepora" stuck, and still does today. Even among those who should know better. My sense of the English language makes it sometimes problematical to recite the whole name of any particular Millepora species. It took the great Hulbrand Boschma a very long time, and a lot of work, to sort out the species, years later.

The illustration of "Millepora" likewise suffered violence at the hands of Hickson. I observed medusae of Millepora platyphylla several times in 1985 and 1986: little did they resemble those drawn from Hickson's illustrations early in the 20th Century, or late in the 19th. And Mayer even had it wrong in his medusae of the world, a copy of which exists at the U. of Guam. He called them Medusae Milleporinae, and stated that they differed from all other hydrozoan medusae, in not having a velum. We confirmed that the medusae of M. platyphylla do indeed possess a velum.

John Lewis of McGill University subsequently published illustrations of medusae of caribbean Millepora sp. that did resemble what we saw.