Ophiothamnus affinis Ljungman, 1872

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 : 165-166

Erroneous— Ophiothamnus affinis Ljungman, 1872

Reports for the Azores:

Ophiothamnus affinis Ljungman, 1872 — Nobre 1938: 75–76.

Type locality: Portugal (38°10’N, 9°25’W) .

See: Ljungman (1872: 622); Paterson (1985: 73, fig. 27); Bartsch (1987: 125–126, figs. 25–26).

Occurrence: North Atlantic, in west recorded from Florida and in the east from the Bay of Biscay to the Western Sahara coast ( NW Africa) and Madeira ( Koehler 1909, 1914 a, Bartsch 1987).

Depth: 1,425 –1,935 m ( Paterson 1985), though in the West Atlantic it was recorded at depths of 229–491 m ( Koehler 1914a).

Habitat: soft sediment (sand; Koehler 1914a).

Remarks: Nobre (1938) listed a specimen of Ophiothamnus affinis collected by Talisman and Travailleur between the Azores and Portugal continental shores, at 38°23’N, 31°10’W (probably using the Paris Meridian) and at a depth of 500 m without referring to a specific station. The coordinates given by the author seem to refer to station 123 conducted by Talisman in 1883, placing the specimen well inside the Azorean waters. However, Koehler (1906b) did not report any material of O. affinis or Ophioleda minima (as Nobre already acknowledged these species to be conspecific) from that particular station. Furthermore, Koehler (1906a, 1906b, 1914a) described Ophioleda minima on the basis of specimens collected by Travailleur and Talisman in Northern Spanish waters at a depth of 1,037 –1,350 m, not between the Azores and Portugal as Nobre seemed to claim. In spite of the wide distribution of O. affinis in the North Atlantic, the presence of this species in the archipelago is still to be confirmed.