Amphiura chiajei Forbes, 1843

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 : 161-162

Erroneous— Amphiura chiajei Forbes, 1843

Reports for the Azores:

Amphiura chiajei Forbes, 1843 — Mortensen 1927a: 212–213, figs. 117, 120.1–2; Grieg 1932: 37; Nobre 1938: 84, fig. 41.1; Tortonese 1965: 224–227, figs. 105–106; Fenaux 1970: 262–271, figs. 1–5; Moyse & Tyler 1995: 67, fig. 12.7; Micael & Costa 2010: 322; Micael et al. 2012: 3.

Type locality: Aegean Sea, Mediterranean Sea.

See: Forbes (1843: 150, pl. 14, figs. 8–13); Madsen (1970: 167–168, figs. 4–5a); Paterson (1985: 87–88, fig. 34).

Occurrence: Mediterranean Sea and Northeast Atlantic, from Scandinavia to the southern coast of Angola ( Mortensen 1927a, 1936, Tortonese 1965), including the Canaries ( Bacallado et al. 1985) and Madeira ( Jesus & Abreu 1998).

Depth: 2– 1,250 m ( Cherbonnier 1970, Koukouras et al. 2007).

Habitat: soft sediments (sand, mud to silt) and among algae ( Koukouras et al. 2007, Tortonese 1965); lives buried in the sediment with the arms extended above the surface feeding on deposited material ( Picton 1993).

Larval stage: lecithotrophic ( Fenaux 1970).

Remarks: both Mortensen (1927a) and Grieg (1932) have listed the Azores under the geographical range of Amphiura chiajei . However, to the best of our knowledge no specimen belonging to this species was ever recorded from the archipelago. In view of this, the inclusion of A. chiajei in the Azorean fauna by those authors appears to be a misprint and should be dismissed as erroneous.