Heliania racemosa (Wright & Studer, 1889)

Juncella racemosa Wright & Studer, 1889: 159–160, pl. 34, fig. 11 ( Hyalonema ground, Japan); Thomson & Simpson 1909: 268–269 (Andamans); Simpson, 1910: 54–56, figs. 20–23 (Andmans).

Junceella miniacea Thomson & Henderson, 1906: 81–82, pl. 5, figs. 7, 12.

? Heliania spinescens Gray, 1859: 481 .

Opinion: There is evidence this species occurs in the region.

Justification:

Literature analysis: This species was collected from deep water off Japan and originally described by Wright and Studer as Juncella racemosa . In their1906 monograph, Thomson & Henderson described a new species from the Andamans, Junceella miniacea, failing to see that it was very similar to Juncella racemosa because of the very stylised sclerite images presented by Wright and Studer. Later, Thomson & Simpson (1909) claimed Junceella miniacea was the same as Juncella racemosa after having examined Wright & Studer’s type specimen of the latter, and synonymised the two. Simpson (1910) assigned a specimen from the Andamans to this species and Nutting (1910d: 21) recorded the species from Indonesia but gave no confirming illustrations. The only reasonable sclerite figures for the species are those of Simpson (1910: fig. 23), which show small differences from the sclerites figured by Bayer & Grasshoff (1994: fig. 2) for Heliania spinescens, which may be a senior synonym of Heliani racemosa .

Rao & Devi (2003) listed the species under the original name but erroneously cited the author as Valenciennes, and Venkataraman et al. (2004) listed Junceella miniacea .