Plinthaster dentatus

Plinthaster dentatus (Perrier, 1884) Reports for the Azores:

Pentagonaster grandis $ Perrier, 1885c: 35–36;

Pentagonaster perrieri Sladen, 1889: 265; $ Perrier 1894: 391–396; $ Koehler 1909: 85–86, pl. 2, fig. 7; Mortensen 1927a: 83–84, figs. 46, 47;

Plinthaster (Pentagonaster) perrieri (Sladen, 1889) — $ Koehler 1921a: 2;

Plinthaster dentatus (Perrier, 1884) — Halpern 1970: 244–252, figs. 17–19; Downey 1973: 52–53, pl. 19, figs. A–B; Gage et al. 1983: 280; A.M. Clark & Downey 1992: 260, pl. 61, figs. D–E; García-Diez et al. 2005: 47; Benavides-Serrato et al. 2011: 168–169; Dilman 2014: 33.

Type locality: off Grenada, Caribbean (12°03’N, 61°49’W).

See: Halpern (1970); Sumida et al. (2001: 26–28, figs. 9a–E); Benavides-Serrato et al. (2011).

Occurrence: Atlantic, in the west from North Carolina (Gray et al. 1968) southwards to Northern Brazil (Halpern 1970) and in the east from the Rockall Trough (Gage et al. 1983) south to the Gulf of Guinea (Koehler 1914b), including the archipelagos of the Azores, Canaries and Cape Verde (Koehler 1909, Grieg 1932).

Depth: 229– 2,910 m (A.M. Clark & Downey 1992); AZO: 1,095 –1,740 m (Koehler 1909, 1921a).

Habitat: muddy to sandy substrates (Koehler 1909); found also on Lophelia coral reefs (Gray et al. 1968).

Remarks: the highly variable Plinthaster dentatus was described under several different names through the years (see Halpern 1970). For example, Perrier (1885c) described a new species Pentagonaster grandis based on specimens collected by Talisman in NW Africa and the Azores. Soon after, Sladen (1889) change the name of this species to Pentagonaster perrieri, as it could be confused with another goniasterid from the Australian waters known at the time as Tosia grandis. Later, Farran (1913) proposed to synonymised P. perrieri with the West Atlantic species P. dentatus, but the synonymy was only formally accepted in 1970, after the extensive review by Halpern.