Urticina grebelnyi Sanamyan and Sanamyan, 2006 Common name(s): Christmas anemone, Painted Urticina, Painted Tealia, Painted anemone, Red and green anemone, Northern red anemone, Dahlia anemone, Mottled anemone
Synonyms:  Urticina crassicornis, Tealia crassicornis
Phylum Cnidaria  Class Anthozoa   Subclass Zoantharia    Order Actiniaria     Suborder Nynantheae      Family Actiniidae
	Urticina grebelnyi at low tide, Sares Head, WA.  Diameter approximately 10 cm.
	(Photo by: Dave Cowles (at night, under a boulder), Sept. 2005)

How to Distinguish from Similar Species:  This is the most common intertidal Urticina found around Rosario. Urticina piscivora has no transverse bands on the tentacles and the column is usually a solid bright red, plus it is subtidal.  Several other Urticina species either have white tubercles or accumulate bits of sand, gravel, and shell on the tubercles.  The most similar species, found in similar habitats, is Urticina coriacea, which has a solid red column and accumulates sand on its tubercles. Cribrinopsis fernaldi has similar colors but the bands on its tentacles are narrow and zigzag and there are radiating red lines on the oral disk. This species on our coast has  up until 2006 been identified as Urticina crassicornis but U. crassicornis does not occur in the North Pacific Ocean and has no tubercles on the column wall.

Geographical Range:  Alaska to S California (uncommon in CA).  Also in Europe and eastern Canada, Maine.  Circumpolar.

Depth Range:  Low intertidal to 30 m.

Habitat:  Often below or hanging from the underside of boulders.

Biology/Natural History:  Feeds on crabs, urchins, mussels, gastropods, chitons, barnacles, and fish.  May feed on stranded jellyfish.  The candy-striped shrimp Lebbeus grandimanus is a commensal, immune to the sting.  Sexes are separate.  In CA and the East Coast fertilization is internal, by sperm which drift in the currents.  Eggs are .5 to .7 mm in diameter.  The female releases the young as small but fully formed juveniles.  In Puget Sound both eggs and sperm are released into the water, and the settling larvae settle preferentially on soft tubeworm tubes.  Young grow to 0.3 cm diameter the first year, may mature by 1-1.5 cm diameter.  Live 60-80 years.  Young are seldom seen.

References:

General References: (nearly all as Urticina crassicornis)
  Brusca and Brusca, 1978 (as Tealia crassicornis)
  Gotshall, 1994
  Harbo, 1999
  Kozloff, 1993
  McConnaughey and McConnaughey, 1985 (as Tealia crassicornis)
  Morris et al., 1980 (as Tealia crassicornis)
  Niesen, 1997
  O'Clair and O'Clair, 1998
  Ricketts et al., 1985 (as Tealia crassicornis)
  Sept, 1999

Scientific Articles:
 SANAMYAN N.P. and K.E. SANAMYAN, 2006. The genera Urticina and Cribrinopsis (Anthozoa: Actiniaria) from the North-Western Pacific. Journal of Natural History 40(7-8) pp. 359-393.

Web sites:  
  Actiniaria.com

This individual has its mouth wide open at low tide, showing some of the inside of the pharynx and/or mesenteries.  The tentacles are hidden underneath the mouth tissue.

An underwater photo by Kirt Onthank, June 2007
 

This all-red individual trawled from around 100 m depth in the San Juan Channel is about 12 cm tall. Photo by Dave Cowles, July 2024

This extremely pale individual is also from about 100 m depth in the San Juan Channel. Even though it has hardly any color, faint bands can be seen on the tentacles and oral disk leading me to tentatively identify the species as Urticina crassicornis. Photos by Dave Cowles, July 2024