RESTRICTION OF THE FAMILY PORANIIDAE, SENSU SPENCER & WRIGHT, 1966 (ECHINODERMATA : ASTEROIDEA) By FREDERICK H. C. HOTCHKISS AND AILSA M. CLARK SYNOPSIS The amalgamation of two families of asteroids under the name Poraniidae in the Asterozoa section of the Treatise on invertebrate paleontology by Spencer & Wright (1966) is here rejected on the basis of the fundamentally different arrangement of the actinal plates in the two groups of genera concerned. INTRODUCTION THE initiative for this note and the observation on which it is based came from one of us (F. H. C. H.), the history of the problem being dealt with by the other. The specimens used to illustrate it were specially prepared (by treatment with KOH followed by glycerine to increase the transparency of the normally opaque skin and reveal the skeleton) by Mr R. H. Harris of the Histology and Preservation Section of the Zoology Department, British Museum (Natural History), and photographed to emphasize further the skeletal structure by Mr P. A. Richens of the Photographic Unit of the Museum, to whom we are indebted. HISTORY In 1840 three nominal genera of stellate, thick-skinned asteroids were described : (1) Aster ope Miiller & Troschel (i84oa) with type Asterias carinifera Lamarck, 1816, by monotypy, renamed Asteropsis by the same authors (i84ob) several months later (without explanation but presumably because they had found the first name preoccupied) ; (2) Gymnasteria Gray for G. spinosa and G. inermis spp. nov. ; and (3) Porania Gray for 'Asterias gibbosa Leach', said to be Leach 1817 but probably from an MS catalogue of the British Museum collections. (This is not the same species as Asterias gibbosa Pennant, 1777, which Gray gives as Asterina gibbosa on the next page.) Gray's paper was published in December, 1840 and post-dated both of Miiller & Troschel's (see Fisher, 1908). In their main work, the System der Asteriden in 1842, Miiller and Troschel cited both Gymnasteria and Porania as synonyms of Asteropsis. They included in the genus A. carinifera (Lamarck), Asteropsis ctenacantha sp. nov. (referred to the synonymy of Porania pulvillus (O. F. Miiller) by Perrier, 1875), Asterias pulvillus Bull. BY. Mus. nat. Hist. (Zool.) 30, 6 Issued 25 November 1976
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