Echinocyamus scaber macrostomus Mortensen, 1907

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 : 134-135

Echinocyamus scaber macrostomus Mortensen, 1907

Reports for the Azores

Echinocyamus macrostomus $ Mortensen, 1907: 36–37 , pl. 12, figs. 2, 7, 17, 24; $ Koehler 1909: 235, pl. 4, figs. 9–10; Mortensen 1927a: 315, 1948: 183–184; García-Diez et al. 2005: 51; Madeira et al. 2011: 255;

Echinocyamus scaber macrostomus Mortensen, 1907 — $ Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984: 186–187, fig. 2.2; Mironov 2006: 113– 114; Mironov 2014: 124.

See: Mortensen (1907; 1927b: 30–31); Mironov & Sagaidachny (1984).

Occurrence: North Atlantic, in the west from the Blake Plateau to Cuba ( Mironov 2014), in the east from Portugal to Cape Verde ( Mortensen 1907, 1927b) including the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira ( Mortensen 1907) and the Josephine, Tropic and Meteor seamounts ( Mironov 2006). The subspecies E. scaber scaber de Meijere, 1903 is reported from the Indo-Pacific ( Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984).

Depth: 1,010 –2,820 m, though bare tests have been reported as deep as 3,140 m ( Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984); AZO: 1,560 –2,178 m ( Mortensen 1907, Koehler 1909).

Habitat: mud to sand ( Koehler 1909).

Remarks: Mortensen (1907) described two species of Echinocyamus , E. macrostomus and E. grandiporus using material, which included animals collected in Azorean deep waters. Mortensen (1907) considered his two new deep-water species closely related though E. macrostomus tended to live in deeper waters. In contrast, Mironov & Sagaidachny (1984) considered E. macrostomus closely related with E. scaber and downgraded Mortensen species to a variety of the later. Additionally, Mironov (2006) observed that some of the specimens from Meteor and Antialtair seamounts presented intermediate characteristics between this subspecies and E. grandiporus , suggesting that they could represent hybrids.