OPHIODERMATIDAE Ljungman, 1867

Alitto, Renata A. S., Bueno, Maristela L., Guilherme, Pablo D. B., Domenico, Maikon Di, Christensen, Ana Beardsley & Borges, Michela, 2018, Shallow-water brittle stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from Araçá Bay (Southeastern Brazil), with spatial distribution considerations, Zootaxa 4405 (1), pp. 1-66 : 11

Family OPHIODERMATIDAE Ljungman, 1867

Type taxon. Ophioderma Müller & Troschel, 1840 .

Diagnosis. Disc covered dorsally with small plates typically concealed completely by a dense coating of granules in adult specimens. Radial shields evident or not. The granules may cover jaws, oral, and adoral shields. The numerous lateral oral papillae form a continuous series with the apical papillae. Arms inserted laterally into the disc. Arm spines short, usually numerous, and appressed to the side of the arm ( Tommasi 1970; Paterson 1985; Albuquerque 1986; Borges & Amaral 2005).

Comments. Ophiodermatidae was initially supported for several species with granules and by the presence of numerous lateral oral papillae forming a continuous series with the apical papillae ( Ljungman 1867; Borges & Amaral 2005). These characteristics are easily confused with Ophiocomidae . Recently, a new defining character was proposed to differentiate the family: dental plate predominantly fragmented into several plates with elongated sockets ( Martynov 2010). Ophiodermatidae has also been supported in several recent studies utilizing next-gen sequence-capture methodology ( O’Hara et al. 2014; Hugall et al. 2016; O’Hara et al. 2017). The family is widely distributed bathymetrically and geographically, found down to 2,700 m ( Tommasi 1970; Alvarado & Solís-Marín 2013). They are members of the epifauna, living on soft bottom, rocky shores, reefs, and in rocky crevices ( Borges & Amaral 2005). This family is comprised of 60 species distributed across 11 genera ( O’Hara et al. 2017). Seven species of two genera are recorded in Brazil ( Barboza & Borges 2012).