Echinocardium flavescens

Echinocardium flavescens (Müller, 1776) Reports for the Azores:

Echinocardium flavescens (M̹ller, 1776)—? $ Barrois 1888: 110; Koehler 1914b: 279, 1921b: 136–137, fig. 95; Mortensen 1927a: 334–335, figs. 194.3, 195.4, 196.2, 197.1, 1951b: 158–160; Nobre 1938: 128–129, fig. 55; $ Tortonese 1965: 366– 367, fig. 180; Pereira 1997: 334; Micael & Costa 2010: 323; Madeira et al. 2011: 257; Micael et al. 2012: 4.

See: Tortonese (1965); Schultz (2006: 413, fig. 413).

Occurrence: Mediterranean Sea and Northeast Atlantic, from Iceland and Scandinavia south to Portugal (Mortensen 1927a, 1927, Nobre 1938), Madeira (Jesus & Abreu 1998) and the Azores (Tortonese 1965).

Depth: 5–360 metres (Tortonese 1965);? AZO: 15–30 m (Barrois 1888).

Habitat: buried in gravel, sand, muddy, detritic and coralligenous bottoms (Koehler 1921b).

Larval stage: planktotrophic (McEdward & Miner 2001).

Remarks: Echinocardium flavescens was first reported by Barrois (1888), who noted that all his specimens though quite abundant in all the dredges between 15 and 30 meters, appeared unusually small to what he had seen in French coasts. On re-examination of Barrois’ material, Koehler (1909) disagreed with the previous author’s identification, observing that all specimens appear to be young E. cordatum and not E. flavescens (see above). However, the author also added that the animals were far too small for an accurate determination and lacked important diagnostic characters such as the pedicellaria. Nonetheless, Tortonese (1965) later examined animals coming from Faial Island and confirmed the presence of this species in the archipelago.

Additionally, Barrois failed to collect Echinocyamus pusillus (= Echinocyamus angulosus) from the Azores. This author used the absence of this species from his dredges together with the minute sized that supposedly characterize the insular E. flavescens to explain that in his opinion Drouët (1861) mistook E. flavescens for Echinocyamus pusillus. During the International Workshop of Malacology and Marine Biology (2006) abundant material of both Echinocardium and Echinocyamus was retrieved from several dredges in the south coast of S„o Miguel Island. On that account, we are inclined to disagree with Barrois since both Echinocardium and Echinocyamus appear to be quite common in the Azores. Notwithstanding, E. pusillus tends to occur in coarser sediments than Echinocardium species (Nichols 1959; Higgins 1974), and this apparent biotope partitioning could explain why Barrois reported one species and failed to do so for the other (see as well remarks under E. pusillus).