Homolampas fragilis ( Agassiz, 1869 )

Madeira, Patrícia, Kroh, Andreas, Cordeiro, Ricardo, De, António M., Martins, Frias & Ávila, Sérgio P., 2019, The Echinoderm Fauna of the Azores (NE Atlantic Ocean), Zootaxa 4639 (1), pp. 1-231 : 173

Erroneous— Homolampas fragilis ( Agassiz, 1869)

Reports for the Azores:

non Homolampas fragilis (Agassiz) —A.H. Clark 1949: 376, 377. [misidentified A. atlantica ]

Type locality: Caribbean.

See: Mortensen (1950: 266–272, pl. 7, figs. 5–6, pl. 13, figs. 5, pl. 25, figs. 1,4, 13, 15–18); Benavides-Serrato et al. (2012: 118).

Occurrence: Western Atlantic, known only from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean ( Mortensen 1950).

Depth: 550– 3,550 m ( Mortensen 1950).

Habitat: infaunal, in soft bottoms ( Pawson et al. 2009).

Remarks: A.H. Clark (1949) reported this species from the Azores, based fragments of two medium-sized specimens retrieved by Atlantis , west of S„o Miguel Island (cruise 152, sta 20: 37°50’30”N, 26°00’00”W, 2,562 m). Later, Serafy (1974) re-examined one of the specimens and assigned it to his newly described species, Araeolampas atlantica . The second specimen of H.L. Clark was not mentioned by Serafy, but it seems likely that this also was an Araeolampas , since H. fragilis does not reach a size larger than 35 mm ( Serafy 1974) and confirmed records of H. fragilis are restricted to the West Atlantic.