Subfamily Petalophthalminae Czerniavsky, 1882

Petalophthalmidae Czerniavsky, 1882: 56 (in key).

Petalophthalmidae – Tattersall & Tattersall 1951: 113 (partim). — O.S. Tattersall 1955: 58 (partim). — Murano 1971: 46. — Lagardère 1983: 814. — Tchindonova 1993: 152 (partim). — Nouvel et al. 1999: 78 (partim). — Meland & Willassen 2007: 1096 (partim). — Fukuoka 2009: 409. — Price & Heard 2009: 939. — Ortiz et al. 2012: 985. — Petryashov 2014: 185 (partim). — San Vicente et al. 2014: 78. — Sawamoto 2014 (partim). — Many additional references not listed.

Petalophthalminae – Wittmann et al. 2014: 331. — Meland et al. 2015: table 4. — San Vicente & Corbari 2015: 243. — San Vicente 2017: 154. — Mees & Meland 2019 (in database).

Petalophthalmidae Holt & Tattersall, 1906: 21–22 (this invalid taxon erroneously described as a new one although already having been established by Czerniavsky (1882), who used the same name based on the same implicitly defined type genus).

Diagnosis (revised from Wittmann et al. 2014)

Petalophthalmidae with large antennula showing distinct sexual dimorphism; eyes normal or modified, in any case not miniaturized, visual elements present or absent; mandibular palp long, powerful, and prehensile; thoracopods 1–2 without exopod, thoracopods 3–8 with well-developed exopod; powerful subchelae are formed by opposition of dactylus with large claw to the propodus in thoracic endopod 1, and to the carpopropodus in endopod 2; merus of endopod 1 with large endite; ischium of endopod 2 with again larger, subquadrangular endite; endopod 5 with more than three segments; endopods 3–4 and 6–8 normal or reduced to different degrees; well-developed oostegites on thoracopods 2–8; female pleopods uniramous or biramous, male pleopods biramous; exopod of uropods with subterminal suture.

Type genus

Petalophthalmus Willemoës-Suhm, 1874 .

Genera included

Petalophthalmus Willemoës-Suhm, 1874 [4 species]

Ipirophthalmus gen. nov. [4 species]

Pseudopetalophthalmus Bravo & Murano, 1997 [2 species]

Parapetalophthalmus Murano & Bravo, 1998 [1 species]

Distribution

The pooled taxa of Petalophthalminae show a panoceanic distribution between 56 ° N and 46° S, total depth range 0–5500 m, mainly 100– 500 m.