ABSTRACT
Seastars of the genus Henricia have long been problematic because of the seemingly endless variety of skeletal variations. Most popular accounts recognize onlyH. leviuscula on theWest Coast even thoughmore than a dozen nominal Henricia species have been described from the northeastern Pacific. We have focused on intertidal and shallow subtidal members of Henricia between British Columbia and northern Baja California, with particular emphasis in Washington and central California. Through the study of external skeletal morphology and also sequences from partial mitochondrial 16S rDNA sequences, we have separated at least nine species, most of which appear to be new.As rootedwith a SouthAfrican congener,H.ornata, as outgroup the 16S-based phylogeny has H. aspera, H. annectens, and an unidentified species from southern England as basal to at least seven other West Coast species. The remaining species fall into two subclades: 1) one comprised of four relatively largebodied and brightly colored species that are sympatric in the intertidal of the Pacific Northwest; 2) another comprised of three small-bodied species that are wider ranging in their geographic distribution and are all probably new species. We have observed one of the latter species to be a brooder, whereas most other studied Henricia spp. free spawn large yolky eggs. The brooder ranges between at least northern Baja California and British Columbia. Overall, there is a close correspondence between our sequence results and specific diagnostic external features, which can thus be used to identify all nine of the treated species.
