Ijimalophus Van Soest & Hooper, 2020

Ijimalophus Van Soest & Hooper, 2020: 70 .

The genus name was erected to remove homonymy of the genus Sericolophus Ijima, 1901 (Van Soest et al. 2020: case nr. 121), but it should perhaps have been named Hernandeziana Strand, 1932 because Reiswig & Zgraggen (1991: 70) proposed their synonymy. There are several uncertain aspects of this proposed synonymy, e.g. the holotype of the type species Sericolophus reflexus Ijima, 1901 has not been identified as yet, while the holotype of the type species of Hernandeziana, i.e. Corythophora ijimae Ferrer Hernández, 1932: 99, redescribed by Reiswig & Zgraggen (1991) consists only of a root plume, lacking essential spicule types. I will not take a decision here to revert Ijimalophus to the synonymy of Hernandeziana, leaving this to future studies.