Plinthaster dentatus ( Perrier, 1884 )

Madeira, Patrícia, Kroh, Andreas, Cordeiro, Ricardo, De, António M., Martins, Frias & Ávila, Sérgio P., 2019, The Echinoderm Fauna of the Azores (NE Atlantic Ocean), Zootaxa 4639 (1), pp. 1-231 : 90

Plinthaster dentatus ( Perrier, 1884)

Reports for the Azores:

Pentagonaster grandis $ Perrier, 1885c: 35–36 ;

Pentagonaster perrieri Sladen, 1889: 265 ; $ Perrier 1894: 391–396; $ Koehler 1909: 85–86, pl. 2, fig. 7; Mortensen 1927a: 83–84, figs. 46, 47;

Plinthaster (Pentagonaster) perrieri ( Sladen, 1889) — $ Koehler 1921a: 2;

Plinthaster dentatus ( Perrier, 1884) — Halpern 1970: 244–252, figs. 17–19; Downey 1973: 52–53, pl. 19, figs. A–B; Gage et al. 1983: 280; A.M. Clark & Downey 1992: 260, pl. 61, figs. D–E; García-Diez et al. 2005: 47; Benavides-Serrato et al. 2011: 168–169; Dilman 2014: 33.

Type locality: off Grenada, Caribbean (12°03’N, 61°49’W) .

See: Halpern (1970); Sumida et al. (2001: 26–28, figs. 9a–E); Benavides-Serrato et al. (2011).

Occurrence: Atlantic, in the west from North Carolina ( Gray et al. 1968) southwards to Northern Brazil ( Halpern 1970) and in the east from the Rockall Trough ( Gage et al. 1983) south to the Gulf of Guinea ( Koehler 1914b), including the archipelagos of the Azores, Canaries and Cape Verde ( Koehler 1909, Grieg 1932).

Depth: 229– 2,910 m (A.M. Clark & Downey 1992); AZO: 1,095 –1,740 m ( Koehler 1909, 1921a).

Habitat: muddy to sandy substrates ( Koehler 1909); found also on Lophelia coral reefs ( Gray et al. 1968).

Remarks: the highly variable Plinthaster dentatus was described under several different names through the years (see Halpern 1970). For example, Perrier (1885c) described a new species Pentagonaster grandis based on specimens collected by Talisman in NW Africa and the Azores. Soon after, Sladen (1889) change the name of this species to Pentagonaster perrieri , as it could be confused with another goniasterid from the Australian waters known at the time as Tosia grandis . Later, Farran (1913) proposed to synonymised P. perrieri with the West Atlantic species P. dentatus , but the synonymy was only formally accepted in 1970, after the extensive review by Halpern.