Family Phyllodicolidae Delamare Deboutteville & Laubier, 1961

The family name is a replacement for Phyllocolidae Delamare Deboutteville & Laubier, 1960 which was based on a preoccupied generic name, Phyllocola Delamare Deboutteville & Laubier, 1960 . The family Phyllodicolidae comprises two genera and three species are currently known; all are mesoparasites of phyllodocid polychaetes (O’Reilly 2000). The endosoma of the adult female has the form of paired buccal rhizoids that penetrate the host's coelom. Various developmental stages of females have been reported (Laubier 1961; Gotto & Leahy 1988), but no males, and the family has thus far been recorded only from the North Atlantic and Mediterranean. The family currently comprises two genera, Phyllodicola Delamare Deboutteville & Laubier, 1961 and Cyclorhiza Heegaard, 1942, but it is difficult to identify robust characters to separate these genera. Their validity as distinct genera is in need of re-assessment but the lack of any information concerning males in this family is a significant obstacle to such a revision.