Echinocyamus scaber subsp. macrostomus Mortensen 1907

Echinocyamus scaber macrostomus Mortensen, 1907 Reports for the Azores

Echinocyamus macrostomus $ Mortensen, 1907: 36–37, pl. 12, figs. 2, 7, 17, 24; $ Koehler 1909: 235, pl. 4, figs. 9–10; Mortensen 1927a: 315, 1948: 183–184; García-Diez et al. 2005: 51; Madeira et al. 2011: 255;

Echinocyamus scaber macrostomus Mortensen, 1907 — $ Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984: 186–187, fig. 2.2; Mironov 2006: 113– 114; Mironov 2014: 124.

See: Mortensen (1907; 1927b: 30–31); Mironov & Sagaidachny (1984).

Occurrence: North Atlantic, in the west from the Blake Plateau to Cuba (Mironov 2014), in the east from Portugal to Cape Verde (Mortensen 1907, 1927b) including the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira (Mortensen 1907) and the Josephine, Tropic and Meteor seamounts (Mironov 2006). The subspecies E. scaber scaber de Meijere, 1903 is reported from the Indo-Pacific (Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984).

Depth: 1,010 –2,820 m, though bare tests have been reported as deep as 3,140 m (Mironov & Sagaidachny 1984); AZO: 1,560 –2,178 m (Mortensen 1907, Koehler 1909).

Habitat: mud to sand (Koehler 1909).

Remarks: Mortensen (1907) described two species of Echinocyamus, E. macrostomus and E. grandiporus using material, which included animals collected in Azorean deep waters. Mortensen (1907) considered his two new deep-water species closely related though E. macrostomus tended to live in deeper waters. In contrast, Mironov & Sagaidachny (1984) considered E. macrostomus closely related with E. scaber and downgraded Mortensen species to a variety of the later. Additionally, Mironov (2006) observed that some of the specimens from Meteor and Antialtair seamounts presented intermediate characteristics between this subspecies and E. grandiporus, suggesting that they could represent hybrids.