Stenoscyphopsis
This genus is known only from eight specimens collected from the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, nearshore in Monterey Bay, California, near the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, during the summer of 1952 (Gwilliam, 1956). It was described in an unpublished PhD dissertation by Gwilliam (1956), but the genus (and species) cannot be acknowledged until it is formally described in a published location.
From Gwilliam (1956): "Stauromedusae without a claustrum, with interradial paired arms. With or without 'conuli' (reduced anchors) during some phase in development; with an interrupted marginal muscle, ectomesogleal, passing on the inner side of the conuli when present; with an elongate, tubular calyx terminating in a relatively very short stalk. Stalk single-chambered in the upper portion, apprearing five-chambered in the lower portion in cross section owing to an invagination from the center of the pedal disc forming an axial canal connected to the outside. The septa of the stalk fuse with the walls of this invagination producing four radial [chambers] and one central chanber. Stalk with four interradial muscles in the septa."
Gwilliam (1956) chose the (unpublished) genus name "Stenoscyphopsis" for this temperate Eastern Pacific genus because of the similarity in general appearance to the genus Stenoscyphus, which is known from the shallow subtidal in the temperate Western Pacific.
Monterey Bay, California, on the kelp Macrocystis pyrifera.
Known only from nearshore kelp Macrocystis pyrifera in Pacific Grove, California, near the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey Bay.