Family PHOXICHILIDIIDAE Sars, 1891

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• Anoplodactylidae Hayward, P.J. & Ryland, J.S. (eds) 1990. The Marine Fauna of the British Isles and North-West Europe. Volume 1. Introduction and Protozoans to Arthropods. Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Introduction

A family of mostly shallow water sea spiders.

The family is distributed worldwide, and some species of Anoplodactylus, its most speciose genus, can sometimes be quite abundant and diverse in certain intertidal and subtidal habitats (Arango 2003). Anoploactylus can be considered a typical tropical genus (King 1973).

Phoxichilidium is relatively common in northern seas and is known for its parasitic association with hydroids (see Lovely 2005). Endeis is strongly supported as the sister taxon of Anoplodactylus (Arango & Wheeler 2007), but it is expected that more extensive taxon sampling in future cladistic analyses will clarify the position of Endeis with respect to Anoplodactylus and Phoxichilidium.

Diagnosis

Chelifores with 1-segmented scape, small functional chelae; palps lacking entirely; ovigers 5- or 6-segmented, in males only, without strigilis or terminal claw; legs with tiny auxiliary claws lateral to main claw or larger and distal, male cement gland exit(s) conspicuous on dorsal femur, (no extra-legged forms). In the Anoplodactylus californicus-digitatus complex, which includes Australian species, females display unique, ventral protuberances on the proboscis, which have been recognised as specific diagnostic characters (Arango & Maxmen, 2006).

General References

Arango, C.P. 2003. Sea spiders from the Great Barrier Reef: New species, new records and ecological annotations. Journal of Natural History 37(22): 2723-2772

Arango, C.P. & Maxmen, A. 2006. Proboscis ornamentation as a diagnostic character for the Anoplodactylus californicus-digitatus complex (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida) with an example from the Anoplodactylus eroticus female. Zootaxa 1311: 51-64

Arango, C.P. & Wheeler, W.C. 2007. Phylogeny of the sea spiders (Arthropoda, Pycnogonida) based on direct optimization of six loci and morphology. Cladistics 23: 255-293

King, P.E. 1973. Pycnogonids. London : Hutchinson Hutchinson and Co.

Lovely, E.C. 2005. The life history of Phoxichilidium tubulariae (Pycnogonida: Phoxichilidiidae). Northeastern Naturalist 12(1): 77-92

Sars, G.O. 1891. Pycnogonidea. Norwegian North-Atlantic Expedition, 1876-1878, 6 (Zoology 20). Christiania : Grondahl and Son pp. 1-163.

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