Lamellilatirus Lyons & Snyder, 2008

Lyons, William G. & Snyder, Martin Avery, 2019, Fasciolariidae (Gastropoda: Neogastropoda) of French Guiana and nearby regions, with descriptions of two new species and comments on marine zoogeography of northeastern South America, Zootaxa 4585 (2), pp. 239-268 : 254-255

Genus Lamellilatirus Lyons & Snyder, 2008

Type species. Fusus ceramidus Dall, 1889 , Recent, Barbados, by original designation ( Lyons & Snyder, 2008: 236).

Diagnosis. Shell: small to medium size, fusiform, light-weight, with columellar folds faint or (usually) lacking and with abundant scale-like lamellae on sutural ramp. Radula: rachidian tooth subquadrate, longer than wide, with 3 forward-directed cusps, median cusp longest; lateral tooth wide, with single small cusp at medial edge, flanked by larger, mesially slanting saw-toothed cusps; much smaller cusp near lateral margin separated from others by wide gap ( Lyons & Snyder 2008: 228, fig. 3a, after Bullock 1968).

Remarks. Absence of columellar folds is common among genera of Fusininae but also occurs among some genera of Peristerniinae , e.g. the Indo-west Pacific genus Fusolatirus Kuroda & Habe, 1971 , but the radula of Fusolatirus has alternating long and short cusps on lateral teeth (Kuroda & Habe 1971: 182). Bullock (1968: pl. 8) figured radulae of several Western Atlantic species of Peristerniinae now in Polygona Schumacher, 1817, Hemipolygona Roveretto, 1899 , Pustulatirus Vermeij & Snyder, 2006 , Bullockus Lyons & Snyder, 2008 and Lamellilatirus . Of these, the Lamellilatirus radula resembles those of species now classified in Pustulatirus , but shells of that genus have distinct columellar folds ( Lyons & Snyder 2013a). The Lamellilatirus radula also resembles those of some species of the Indo-west Pacific genus Benimakia Habe, 1958 (see Bouchet & Snyder 2012: figs. 3A–F), but shells of that genus have a labral tooth that is absent in Lamellilatirus .

In studies of molecular phylogeny of Fasciolariidae ( Couto et al. 2016: 314, 315; Kantor et al. 2018: 4, 14), a species of Lamellilatirus from French Guiana (IM 2013-56511) grouped with species of Latirus Montfort, 1810 , Leucozonia Gray, 1847 and Polygona Schumacher, 1817 (genera customarily placed in Peristerniinae ), not with genera of Fusininae .

Five species of Lamellilatirus have been described: L. ceramidus ( Dall, 1889) and L. dominiquei , L. eburneus , L. lamyi and L. sunderlandorum , all of Lyons and Snyder, 2013. Species of Lamellilatirus were known previously only in the southern Caribbean Sea, ranging from Puerto Rico and Honduras southward to Venezuela. Two new species described here extend the range of the genus to northeastern South America.