Nanaphora Laseron, 1958

Type species. Nanaphora torquesa Laseron, 1958; original designation. Recent, Australia.

Diagnosis. Small or minute shells, bottle-shaped, and medially inflated, but restricted at base; paucispiral or multispiral protoconch; in the latter, embryonic shell reticulated or with rounded/cruciform granules; larval shell with one or two spiral cords; teleoconch with median spiral cord emerging later; suture barely distinct (based on Laseron 1958 and Marshall 1983).

Remarks. The genus has up to now 13 species worldwide (Bouchet & Rosenberg 2014b), none in the western Atlantic; however, the species previously assigned to Cheirodonta in the western Atlantic actually belong to Nanaphora (see remarks of Nanaphora verbernei comb. nov.).

The genus Opimaphora Laseron, 1958 is likely a junior synonym of Nanaphora (Marshall 1983), as Laseron (1958) distinguished them by Nanaphora having a paucispiral protoconch and Opimaphora a multispiral protoconch, however this is not a valid feature for distinction between genera (Bouchet 1990). Laseron (1958) considered both genera in the extremity of the short and inflated shells of Triphoridae .