Ophiura kinbergi Ljungman, 1866

Fatemi, Yaser & Stöhr, Sabine, 2019, Annotated species list of Ophiuroidea (Echinodermata) from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, with new records, Zootaxa 4711 (1), pp. 77-106 : 82

Ophiura kinbergi Ljungman, 1866

Ophiura kinbergi Ljungman, 1866: 166 .

Habitat: Gravel, sand with clay, grass bed and subtidal sand, 1–110 m ( Mortensen 1940; Price 1981, 1983).

Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman: Bushehr (2), Bahrain, Kish Island (7), Kuh-Mobarak (14), Ras Tanura (24), Tarut Bay (25), Stiffe’s Bank (28) (ibid.).

Indian Ocean: Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa ( Clark 1980), West Indian Ocean ( Marsh & Marshall 1983), Red Sea ( Vine 1986), Réunion ( Bollard et al. 2013), Scattered Isl. ( Conand et al. 2016), South Africa ( Olbers et al. 2019).

Remarks: Molecular data suggest that O. kinbergi is a southern Australian species (T. O’Hara, personal communication, August 2019) and that Indian Ocean specimens could be called Ophiura indica ( Brock, 1888) . Ophiura indica can be distinguished by its noticeably rounded primary disc plates (T. O’Hara, personal communication, August 2019), but since we did not collect this species, we cannot decide, whether reports from the study area are based on misidentifications. Mortensen (1940) neither discussed his identification of this species nor figured it, and the drawings in Price (1983) are inconclusive. Clark & Rowe (1971) included O. kinbergi as the only shallow-water species of Ophiura in the Indian Ocean, but they figured a specimen from China (pl. 22, figs 5, 6) with almost circular primary plates, for which the name Ophiura sinensis ( Lyman, 1871) would be available ( Olbers et al. 2019). Until the relationships between the putative species have been resolved, we retain the name Ophiura kinbergi .