Suborder II. Botryodea, Haeckel, 1881 (Pl. 96).
Polycyrtida, Haeckel, 1862, Monogr. d. Radiol., p. 341.
Polycyrtida, Bütschli, 1882, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zool., vol. xxxvi. p. 519.
Botryodea (= Botrida vel Botryida), Haeckel, 1881, Prodromus, p. 439.
Definition.—Nassellaria with a complete lattice-shell, exhibiting constantly a lobate and multilocular cephalis, with three to five or more separated lobes, and two to three or more constrictions.
The suborder Botryodea differs from the other Cyrtellaria in the multilocular and lobate shape of the cephalis, which is composed of at least three or four, often five or six, and sometimes even a greater number of lobes, which are separated by constrictions and partly also by internal septa. This characteristic shape is found neither in the Spyroidea (with bilocular cephalis) nor in the Cyrtoidea (with simple cephalis). The affinities of the former group to the two latter form a very complicated problem, which is not yet solved; the morphology of the Botryodea is the most difficult part in the system of Nassellaria, and what we can here give, are incomplete and unsatisfactory beginnings only.
Up to the year 1860 only a single genus of the Botryodea was known, Lithobotrys, one of the oldest genera of "Polycystina," and described by Ehrenberg in 1844 (Monatsber. d. k. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Berlin, p. 74). He gave the following definition:—"Loricæ siliceæ articuli in adulto non in seriem, sed in uvæ brevis formam, id est in loculos plus minus discretos nonnullos contiguos dispositi. Proxime ad Lithocampem accedit." In his first System (1847) Lithobotrys is placed with Lithocampe among his family Lithochytrina. Afterwards (1860) Ehrenberg added two new genera, under the names Botryocampe and Botryocyrtis and figured some species of these incompletely in his last works (1872, 1875).
In my Monograph I founded for these three genera the separate subfamily of Polycyrtida, added as a fourth genus Spyridobotrys, and gave to the group the following definition (1862, loc. cit., p. 341):—"Lattice-shell divided by two or more annular strictures, partly longitudinally, partly transversely, into three or more unequal chambers, which are placed in different planes and have a different relation to the poles of the shell-axis."
The new and remarkable forms of Botryodea, which I subsequently found in the Challenger collection, demonstrated that the Botryodea differ from the other Cyrtellaria (the Cyrtoidea as well as the Spyroidea) in a far higher degree than I formerly had supposed. A synopsis of the figures in Pl. 96 will give sufficient evidence of this view. Therefore in my Prodromus (1881, p. 439)
