Macellicephalinae gen. sp. 1

Gunton, Laetitia M., Kupriyanova, Elena K., Alvestad, Tom, Avery, Lynda, Blake, James A., Biriukova, Olga, Boeggemann, Markus, Borisova, Polina, Budaeva, Nataliya, Burghardt, Ingo, Capa, Maria, Georgieva, Magdalena N., Glasby, Christopher J., Hsueh, Pan-Wen, Hutchings, Pat, Jimi, Naoto, Kongsrud, Jon A., Langeneck, Joachim, Meissner, Karin, Murray, Anna, Nikolic, Mark, Paxton, Hannelore, Ramos, Dino, Schulze, Anja, Sobczyk, Robert, Watson, Charlotte, Wiklund, Helena, Wilson, Robin S., Zhadan, Anna & Zhang, Jinghuai, 2021, Annelids of the eastern Australian abyss collected by the 2017 RV ' Investigator' voyage, ZooKeys 1020, pp. 1-198 : 1

Macellicephalinae gen. sp. 1

Diagnosis.

Small specimens with <17 segments and eight pairs of large elytrophores, elytra all missing. Palps long, smooth; median antenna present, long, with short ceratophore, inserted posteriorly on prostomium; lateral antennae and frontal filaments absent. Facial tubercle absent, upper lip trilobed. Tentaculophores with strongly projecting acicular lobes, chaetae missing or absent, and long styles. Dorsal tubercles with large branchial-like cirriform processes, dorsal cirri styles elongate, attached subdistally on notopodia. Ventral cirri inserted medially on neuropodia from segment 3. Parapodia biramous, notopodia subequal to neuropodia. Notochaetae stout, curved and serrate on convex side, neurochaetae slenderer, with distal part flattened and serrated along both lateral margins. Posterior end without ventral keel, rounded. Pharynx not everted, not dissected due to fragility of specimens, thus unknown.

Remarks.

There are five genera within the Macellicephalinae that possess branchial-like cirriform dorsal tubercles: Bathyfauvelia Pettibone, 1976, Bathycatalina Pettibone, 1976, Bathybahamas Pettibone, 1985, Vampiropolynoe Marcus & Hourdez, 2002, and Yodanoe Bonifácio & Menot, 2018. However, only Bathybahamas and Yodanoe have only eight pairs of elytra. Yodanoe possesses notopodia much shorter than neuropodia, whereas these specimens have noto- and neuropodia subequal in length. Bathybahamas is a monotypic genus, with B. charleneae Pettibone, 1985 described from off the Bahamas at a depth of 2066 m, but it possesses two types of neurochaetae, and 18 body segments, which these specimens do not.

Records.

6 specimens. Suppl. material 1: ops. 31, 79, 98 (AM).