Notopygos megalops McIntosh, 1885

Faulwetter, Sarah, Simboura, Nomiki, Katsiaras, Nikolaos, Chatzigeorgiou, Giorgos & Arvanitidis, Christos, 2017, Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist, Biodiversity Data Journal 5, pp. 20997-20997 : 20997

Notopygos megalops McIntosh, 1885

Notes

Questionable status. The Greek records of Notopygos megalops probably belong to a different species. Notopygos megalops was originally described based on a juvenile specimen from the Caribbean Sea and used to be considered a synonym of Notopygos crinita (Grube, 1855) before it was re-described by Yáñez-Rivera and Carrera-Parra (2012) from the Caribbean Sea based on adult characters. This re-description of Notopygos megalops differs from the description by Fauvel (1923) (which was probably used for the identification of the Greek specimens) in the following characters: Branchiae from chaetiger 6 ( Yáñez-Rivera and Carrera-Parra 2012) instead of chaetiger 7 ( Fauvel 1923); anterior branchiae with main stem and seven branchial filaments, in median chaetigers branching into four stems with five to seven filaments each ( Yáñez-Rivera and Carrera-Parra 2012) vs. small tufts of 2-4 filaments anteriorly and only a single papilliform filament anteriorly Fauvel (1923). Yáñez-Rivera and Carrera-Parra (2012) define the start of the branchiae on chaetiger 6 as characteristic for the species; this seems to be invariable in juvenile individuals, too ( McIntosh 1895). Thus, the species described by Fauvel (1923) and any specimens identified based on his description probably belong to a different species.