Phlyctocythere Keij, 1958

Luz, Nathália Carvalho Da & Coimbra, João Carlos, 2022, Ostracods (Crustacea: Ostracoda) of the Vitoria-Trindade Chain, Southwestern Atlantic, Zootaxa 5188 (4), pp. 301-329 : 311-312

Genus Phlyctocythere Keij, 1958

Remarks. Schornikov (2011) discussed the problematic taxonomy of the family Loxoconchidae Sars, 1926 , and its three subfamilies: Loxoconchinae Sars, 1926 , Cytheromorphinae Mandelstam, 1960, and Nigeroloxoconchinae Reyment, 1963. However, most authors recognize only the first subfamily, as also assigned by Schornikov (2011). In his study, the author also created the subfamily Loxocaudinae , a special category to group together “the genus Loxocauda and the four closest genera”, as follows: Loxocauda Schornikov , Glacioloxoconcha Hartmann , Phlyctocythere Keij , Pseudoloxoconcha Müller and Sarmatina Stancheva.

Regarding the genus Phlyctocythere, Schornikov (2011) considers that only the Paleogene nominal species with two subspecies should be attributed to that genus: P. eocaenica eocaenica Keij, 1958 and P. eocaenica oriunda Moos, 1973 . According to him, five Phlyctocythere species studied by Bold (1988) from the Neogene of the Dominican Republic constitute a closely related group due to the “identical costulae in the posteroventral region of the valves”. Nevertheless, based on the presence of “prominent small eye tubercles”, and “one species [ P. curva ] with incisions on the hinge bar and on the terminal teeth of the valve”, Schornikov (2011) does not include the five Bold’s species in his new subfamily Loxocaudinae .

The two new species of Phlyctocythere described below belong to the Miocene/Pliocene morphological group of five species studied by Bold (1988) in the Dominican Republic, Caribbean. Therefore, if we follow Schornikov (2011) the Bold’s species and those studied here should be grouped in a new genus. The present authors prefer to maintain these two Brazilian species in the genus Phlyctocythere , especially due to the precarious knowledge of this genus, which needs a thorough revision.