Ophiomusaidae, O'Hara, Stohr, Hugall, Thuy & Martynov, 2018

Stöhr, Sabine, Hugall, Andrew F., Thuy, Ben & Martynov, Alexander, 2018, Morphological diagnoses of higher taxa in Ophiuroidea (Echinodermata) in support of a new classification, European Journal of Taxonomy 416, pp. 1-35 : 8-9

Family Ophiomusaidae fam. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:08A62334-062A-4968-9548-4C3EFCE61712

Type genus

Ophiomusa Hertz, 1927 (type species: O. lymani (Wyville-Thomson, 1873)) .

Diagnosis

Disc scales few, primary plates obvious, radial shields enlarged. Ventral arm plates, and in some species also dorsal arm plates, present on few proximal arm joints only. Lateral arm plates with numerous spurs along proximal edge. Extremely short genital slits, rarely as long as first arm joint. Two visible proximal pairs of tentacle pores.

Remarks

Hertz (1927) included 11 species in the genus Ophiomusa – canaliculata (H.L. Clark, 1917) , facunda ( Koehler, 1922a), fallax ( Koehler, 1904) , luetkeni ( Lyman, 1878), lunaris ( Lyman, 1878), lymani , muta Hertz, 1927 (as subspecies of facunda), relicta ( Koehler, 1904), scalare ( Lyman, 1878), trychna (H.L. Clark, 1911) and ultima Hertz, 1927 – many of them with a more simplified skeleton than the type species O. lymani (Baker 2016) . The type species of Ophiomusium , O. eburneum , is genetically and morphologically related to Ophiosphalma and not to the other described species of Ophiomusium . It has 2–3 pairs of visible tentacle pores and persistent ventral and dorsal arm plates, and rounded, almost bulging lateral arm plates. The remaining species of Ophiomusium form a distinct family-level clade with typically 2 (rarely 0 or 1) pairs of visible tentacle pores. Consequently, we transfer these remaining species to the only available genus name, Ophiomusa Hertz, 1927 , which until now has been treated as a synonym of Ophiomusium . A future molecular and morphological revision of the Ophiomusaidae fam. nov. may reveal several monophyletic clades at genus level.