Calanticidae Zevina 1978

Family Calanticidae Zevina, 1978

Subfamily Calanticinae Zevina, 1978 (nom. trans. Newman 1996)

Calantica Gray, 1825. Type Scalpellum villosum Leach, 1824 (cf. Newman & Jones 2011) Subfamily Scillaelepadinae Innocenti, Di Geronimo and Newman, nov.

Scillaelepas Seguenza, 1872. Type † Pollicipes carinata Philippi, 1835

Gruvelialepas Newman, 1980. Type Scalpellum pilsbryi Gruvel, 1911

Aurivillialepas Newman, 1980. Type Scalpellum calyculus Aurivillius, 1898

Newmanilepas Zevina & Yakhontova, 1987 (incertae sedis). Type Scillaelepas mirafica Zevina, 1976

Definition. Calanticidae with peduncular plates relatively large, covered by an inconspicuous cuticle, capitular plates basically thirteen in number in Scillaelepas (Newman & Jones, 2011). The plates consist of the unpaired rostrum (R), carina (C) and subcarina (SC), and paired rostrolatus (RL), scutum (S), lateral (L), tergum (T) and carinolatus (CL), supplemented with one subrostrum (SR) in Aurivillialepas Newman, 1980, or two subrostrolatera (SR1 and SR2) in Gruvelialepas Newman, 1980. The genus Newmanilepas Zevina & Yakhontova, 1987, represented by Scillaelepas mirafica Zevina, 1976, noted as atypical when first described (Newman 1980), subsequently proved to be an early ontogenetic stage to which a second pair of CLs and a SC are added (Zevina & Yakhontova 1987). Therefore it has been designated an incertae sedis member of the Scillaelepadinae.

Remarks. Originally, most of the species comprising these four genera were assigned to Scillaelepas s.l. and while new species have since been attributed to Scillaelepas s.s. and Aurivillialepas, there has been no indication they do not form a natural group. Therefore, we recognized them as such. Nonetheless, while the calanticids already consists of two very large, one moderate and three small subfamilies, all but the Pollicipedinae and the new subfamily are in need of thorough revisions. This is especially true of the Calanticinae since what is now known of thoracican genetics (Herrera et al. 2015), the type species, Calantica villosa (Leach, 1824) is among the few species rooting the only wholly scalpellomorph clade. This can be best appreciated when the unsupported nodes of their “maximum clade credibility ultrametric timescaled tree” are collapsed. Unfortunately, to date but a few calanticids and no scillaelepadines have been sequenced.