Microphthalmus aberrans (Webster & Benedict, 1887)

Faulwetter, Sarah, Simboura, Nomiki, Katsiaras, Nikolaos, Chatzigeorgiou, Giorgos & Arvanitidis, Christos, 2017, Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist, Biodiversity Data Journal 5, pp. 20997-20997 : 20997

Microphthalmus aberrans (Webster & Benedict, 1887)

Notes

Questionable status. Reported from Greece by Akoumianaki and Hughes (1997), also found by Papageorgiou et al. (2006) (unpublished data), but Microphthalmus aberrans is a taxonomically confused species. Riser (2000) revised the species and found the slides of the type material to be comprised of two different species. He assigned specimens previously assigned to Microphthalmus aberrans to three species: Microphthalmus aberrans , Microphthalmus pettiboneae Riser, 2000 and Microphthalmus aggregatus Riser, 2000. However, the species re-described as Microphthalmus aberrans by Riser does not resemble previously available descriptions of the species, as those were mostly copied from a re-description by Southern (1914), which was based on the wrong microscope slide. The specimen on this slide was re-described as Microphthalmus pettiboneae by Riser, causing confusion in the application of the name Microphthalmus aberrans . All specimens reported under this name would need to be re-investigated to clarify their identity.