Araeosoma fenestratum

Araeosoma fenestratum (Thomson, 1872b) Reports for the Azores:

Araeosoma fenestratum (Thomson, 1872b) — Marques 1980: 104; $ Mironov 2006: 103.

Type locality: off the coast of Portugal.

See: Thomson (1872b: 741–744, pl. 63, figs. 9–10, pl. 66, figs. 1–5, pl. 67, figs. 1–9, as Calveria fenestrate); Mortensen (1935: 233–237, pl. 29–30, pl. 78, fig. 11); Benavides-Serrato et al. (2012: 51–52).

Occurrence: North Atlantic, from the Denmark Strait (Mortensen 1903) to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico (Benavides-Serrato et al. 2012), eastwards from off Scotland and the Rockall Trough (Gage et al. 1985; Harvey et al. 1988) to Portugal (Thomson 1872b), including the Azores and the Meteor Seamounts (Mironov 2006).

Depth: 148– 1,270 m (Mironov 2006); AZO:? 900 m (herein).

Habitat: soft sediments, on fine sand to mud (Gage et al. 1985); gut contents include bottom sediments together with a variety of sponges and plant fragments (Serafy & Fell 1985); feeds also on deep-sea reef building corals such as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata (Stevenson & Rocha 2012).

Larval stage: lecithotrophic (Emlet 1995).

Remarks: it is likely that when Marques (1980) mentioned the presence of Araeosoma fenestratum in the Azores he was referring to unreported specimens collected by Biacores expedition in the archipelago. These specimens were mentioned by Mironov (2006) who noted that in the collection of MNHN Paris there are numerous Araeosoma taken in the Azorean waters by Jean Charcot (Biacores cruise, unreported) Cruise and mostly labelled by Vasco Marques as belonging to A. fenestratum. Additionally, the later author identified several specimens belonging to A. fenestratum in Meteor waters bordering the Azores. In 2009, during the expedition EMEPC-LUSO an echinothurid likely to belong to this species was captured on video on the seabed of the Azorean deep waters, north of S„o Jorge Island (38°42'18"N, 28°01'18"W, 900 m; Fig. 28 A–B) and south of Pico Island (36°36'25"N, 28°06'43"W, 2009.10.21, 1,102 m; Fig. 28C).