Leptochiton Gray, 1847

Sirenko, Boris, 2024, The chitons of the family Leptochitonidae (Mollusca: Polyplacophora) from the Emperor Seamounts, Pacific Ocean, Zootaxa 5474 (5), pp. 522-532 : 523

Genus Leptochiton Gray, 1847

Type species. Chiton cinereus sensu Montagu, 1803 (non Linnaeus, 1767) = Leptochiton asellus ( Gmelin, 1791) fide Lovén (1846), by subsequent designation ( Gray 1847).

Genus distribution. Worldwide, Recent, intertidal– 6,920 m.

Remarks. A molecular analysis performed by Sigwart et al. (2011) showed that the genus Leptochiton is not monophyletic. Morphological studies of the genus Leptochiton revealed some groups of species that possess a set of similar features, which include the shell, girdle, radula, and gills ( Sirenko & Sellanes 2016). Over the past fifty years, several genera containing species previously included in the groups of the genus Leptochiton have been restored and described ( Sirenko 1973a, b, 1988, 1992, 2020; Saito 1996; Sirenko et al. 2022). Most of these groups inhabit a more or less restricted area, but several groups, mainly of deep-water leptochitons, are widely distributed in the world oceans. Probably the species of each of these groups originated from different ancestors of the family Leptochitonidae resulting in the polyphyletic character of the genus Leptochiton .