Astrodia tenuispina ( Verrill, 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 : 31-32

Astrodia tenuispina ( Verrill, 1884)

Reports for the Azores:

Astrodia tenuispina ( Verrill, 1884) — $ Sibuet 1972: 121–122; Pérès 1992: 254.

Type locality: off Nantucket Shoals.

See: Verrill (1884: 219, as Asteronyx tenuispina ); Okanishi & Fujita (2014: 198–200, figs. 10–11).

Occurrence: cosmopolitan, in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans; in the Atlantic, from off Nantucket Island to Brazil including the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico deep waters, eastwards from Rockall Trough south to the Iberian Peninsula, including the Canary Islands and the Azores ( Sibuet 1972; Okanishi & Fujita 2014).

Depth: 512– 3,548 m ( Okanishi & Fujita 2014); AZO : 2,480 m ( Sibuet 1972).

Habitat: epizooic on other sedentary marine species, such as the pennatulid Scleroptilum grandiflorum K̂lliker, 1880 on which the Azorean specimen was found ( Sibuet 1972); probably planktivorous ( Gage et al. 1983).

Larval stage: produces large yolky eggs, possibly indicative of a direct or lecithotrophic development ( Gage et al. 1983).

Remarks: the record of the cosmopolitan Astrodia tenuispina in the archipelago was based on a single specimen collected by bathyscaphe Archimède in 1969, north of S„o Miguel Island, and later identified by Sibuet (1972). See also remarks below, under Asteroschema inornatum Koehler, 1906a .