Type taxon. Ophioderma Müller & Troschel, 1840.
Diagnosis. Disc covered dorsally with small plates typically concealed completely by a dense coating of granules in adult specimens. Radial shields evident or not. The granules may cover jaws, oral, and adoral shields. The numerous lateral oral papillae form a continuous series with the apical papillae. Arms inserted laterally into the disc. Arm spines short, usually numerous, and appressed to the side of the arm (Tommasi 1970; Paterson 1985; Albuquerque 1986; Borges & Amaral 2005).
Comments. Ophiodermatidae was initially supported for several species with granules and by the presence of numerous lateral oral papillae forming a continuous series with the apical papillae (Ljungman 1867; Borges & Amaral 2005). These characteristics are easily confused with Ophiocomidae. Recently, a new defining character was proposed to differentiate the family: dental plate predominantly fragmented into several plates with elongated sockets (Martynov 2010). Ophiodermatidae has also been supported in several recent studies utilizing next-gen sequence-capture methodology (O’Hara et al. 2014; Hugall et al. 2016; O’Hara et al. 2017). The family is widely distributed bathymetrically and geographically, found down to 2,700 m (Tommasi 1970; Alvarado & Solís-Marín 2013). They are members of the epifauna, living on soft bottom, rocky shores, reefs, and in rocky crevices (Borges & Amaral 2005). This family is comprised of 60 species distributed across 11 genera (O’Hara et al. 2017). Seven species of two genera are recorded in Brazil (Barboza & Borges 2012).