Petalophthalmidae Czerniavsky, 1882: 56 (in key).
Petalophthalmidae – Tattersall & Tattersall 1951: 113 ( partim). — O.S. Tattersall 1955: 58 ( partim). — Murano 1971: 46. — Lagardère 1983: 814. — Tchindonova 1993: 152 ( partim). — Nouvel et al. 1999: 78 ( partim). — Meland & Willassen 2007: 1096 ( partim). — Fukuoka 2009: 409. — Price & Heard 2009: 939. — Ortiz et al. 2012: 985. — Petryashov 2014: 185 ( partim). — San Vicente et al. 2014: 78. — Sawamoto 2014 ( partim). — Many additional references not listed.
Petalophthalminae – Wittmann et al. 2014: 331. — Meland et al. 2015: table 4. — San Vicente & Corbari 2015: 243. — San Vicente 2017: 154. — Mees & Meland 2019 (in database).
Petalophthalmidae Holt & Tattersall, 1906: 21–22 (this invalid taxon erroneously described as a new one although already having been established by Czerniavsky ( 1882), who used the same name based on the same implicitly defined type genus).
Diagnosis (revised from Wittmann et al. 2014)
Petalophthalmidae with large antennula showing distinct sexual dimorphism; eyes normal or modified, in any case not miniaturized, visual elements present or absent; mandibular palp long, powerful, and prehensile; thoracopods 1–2 without exopod, thoracopods 3–8 with well-developed exopod; powerful subchelae are formed by opposition of dactylus with large claw to the propodus in thoracic endopod 1, and to the carpopropodus in endopod 2; merus of endopod 1 with large endite; ischium of endopod 2 with again larger, subquadrangular endite; endopod 5 with more than three segments; endopods 3–4 and 6–8 normal or reduced to different degrees; well-developed oostegites on thoracopods 2–8; female pleopods uniramous or biramous, male pleopods biramous; exopod of uropods with subterminal suture.
Petalophthalmus Willemoës-Suhm, 1874.
Petalophthalmus Willemoës-Suhm, 1874 [4 species]
Ipirophthalmus gen. nov. [4 species]
Pseudopetalophthalmus Bravo & Murano, 1997 [2 species]
Parapetalophthalmus Murano & Bravo, 1998 [1 species]
The pooled taxa of Petalophthalminae show a panoceanic distribution between 56 ° N and 46° S, total depth range 0–5500 m, mainly 100– 500 m.