Leitoscoloplos Day, 1977

Zhadan, Anna, 2020, Review of Orbiniidae (Annelida, Sedentaria) from Australia, Zootaxa 4860 (4), pp. 451-502 : 465-466

Genus Leitoscoloplos Day, 1977

Leitoscoloplos Day, 1977: 218 , fig. 1a–g; Mackie 1987: 2; Eibye-Jacobsen 2002: 79; Hernández-Alcántara & Solís-Weiss 2014: 142–143; Zhadan et al. 2015: 785 ; Blake 2017: 17 ; Blake 2020: 6 .

Diagnosis (after Zhadan et al. 2015). Prostomium pointed, conical; one achaetous peristomial ring. Thoracic neurochaetae with only crenulated capillaries; abdominal forked notochaetae present or absent. Branchiae simple or branched, either present from posterior thoracic, transitional or abdominal chaetigers, or absent. Interramal cirri present or absent. Posterior thoracic neuropodia with up to six podal papillae. Subpodal and stomach papillae absent, or with up to eight subpodal papillae per parapodium and with numerous stomach papillae in the posterior thorax / anterior abdomen.

Remarks. The main characteristic distinguishing Leitoscoloplos from Scoloplos and other orbiniid genera is the absence of uncini in the thoracic neuropodia in Leitoscoloplos species. The non-monophyly of Leitoscoloplos was suggested by Mackie (1987) and later confirmed through molecular-genetic analysis ( Bleidorn et al. 2009; Zhadan et al. 2015).