Scoloplos Blainville, 1828

Zhadan, Anna, 2020, Review of Orbiniidae (Annelida, Sedentaria) from Australia, Zootaxa 4860 (4), pp. 451-502 : 454

Genus Scoloplos Blainville, 1828

Scoloplos Blainville, 1828: 493 .

Scoloplos (Scoloplos) Hartman 1957: 280 ; Pettibone 1957: 160; Day 1973: 84; Mackie 1987: 20; Zhadan et al., 2015: 779.

Diagnosis (after Zhadan et al. 2015). Prostomium pointed, conical; single achaetous peristomial ring. Thoracic neuropodia bearing crenulated capillaries and hooks arranged in one or more rows; abdominal forked and flailed notochaetae present or absent. Abdominal neuropodia lack robust emergent aciculae. Branchiae simple or branched, from chaetiger 8 or later. 1–2 thoracic neuropodial podal papillae, 0–2 thoracic subpodal papillae, 0–4 abdominal subpodal papillae, stomach papillae absent.

Remarks. The genus Scoloplos is large and heterogenous, is not monophyletic, and includes different genetic clades ( Bleidorn et al. 2009; Zhadan et al. 2015). All morphological characteristics of the species comprising this genus are highly variable. Undoubtedly, Scoloplos will be divided into several different genera after phylogenetic analysis of Orbiniidae using both molecular and morphological characteristics. Blake (2017) transferred several Scoloplos species to the genus Leodamas , which is not accepted in this paper, because these species could belong to other clades for the reasons listed above and systematic decisions should be postponed until new molecular data are obtained.