Narcissia Gray, 1840

Pawson, David L., 2007, Narcissia ahearnae, a new species of sea star from the Western Atlantic (Echinodermata: Asteroidea: Valvatida), Zootaxa 1386, pp. 53-58 : 53-54

Genus Narcissia Gray, 1840

Diagnosis: Disc high, more or less pyramidal, arms five, long, trigonal in cross­section, tapering; abactinal plates in 7–17 irregular series; papulae isolated, single or in pairs; mouth plates with large, blunt, compressed spines; alveolar pedicellariae small, with elongate, spoon­shaped valves, usually abundant but not found in N. ahearnae . (Partly after Clark and Downey, 1992).

Type species: Narcissia canariensis (d’Orbigny, 1839)

Remarks: According to A.M. Clark (1993), there are three valid species of Narcissia , all known only from shelf and slope depths, in excess of about 30 meters. In the eastern Pacific Ocean, N. gracilis A.H. Clark, 1916 , occurs off Lower California, the Gulf of California, Colombia, Malpelo Island ( Downey, 1975) and the Galapagos Islands (Maluf, 1995) in 56–90 meters. In the eastern Atlantic, N. canariensis (d’Orbigny, 1839) ranges from the Canary and Cape Verde Islands to the Congo in 37–155 meters. In the western Atlantic N. trigonaria Sladen, 1889 , is distributed from North Carolina to northeastern Brazil in 37–210 meters. Mortensen (1933) described a variety helenae of this last species from St. Helena.