Bathypallenopsis scoparia (Fage, 1956)

Pallenopsis scoparia Fage, 1956: 171–172, figs, 1–4.

Pallenopsis (Bathypallenopsis) scoparia — Stock, 1987: 516, figs. 13–15; Child, 1991: 67–69, fig. 31; Bamber, 2002b: 719–720, fig. 2.

Bathypallenopsis scoparia — Bamber, 2010: 184–185, fig. 216; Munilla & Soler-Membrives, 2014: 178–180, fig. 98.

Type locality— Galathea Stn. 241, 4º00'00"S 41º27'00"E, 1520 m

Material examined. Maroc-0511: MO115, 1♂.

Remarks. Our material agrees with the description and figures given by Fage (1956, holotype) and Bamber (2002b).

Habitat. Bathypelagic species with a depth range extending from 312 to 1520 m. This species was collected together with hard corals (Stock 1987), sponges, sea urchins (Arnaud 1973) and from muddy bottoms (Munilla 1993). In addition, juveniles have been reported associated to the jellyfish Periphylla periphylla (Perón & Lesueur 1810) (Child & Harbison 1986) . Our material was collected at 1340 m.

Geographical distribution. Widely distributed species, known from the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. In the West Atlantic, B. scoparia has been reported from the Gulf of Mexico (Child 1992b) and Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea (Child & Harbison 1986) and from Rockall Trough (Bamber 2010), Porcupine Bank, the Mid Atlantic Ridge (Bamber 2002b), Gulf of Biscay (Arnaud 1972), Gibraltar (Stock 1987) in the East Atlantic, including the Mediterranean coast of Spain (Soler-Membrives & Munilla 2015). In the Indian Ocean, the species is known from Kenya (Fage 1956), Maldives and Indonesia (Stock 1994) and from Japan (Nakamura & Child 1991; Miyazaki 2022), Chesterfield Islands (Stock 1991b), Melanesia (Bamber 2004a) and the Peru-Chile Trench (Bamber 2002b) in the Pacific. Our specimen was collected from the south of Morocco, which extends its southern limit of distribution in the East Atlantic.