Fossil and Recent Muricidae of the World, Part Muricopsinae

About this book

Almost forty-five years ago, two legendary semi-popular books on the family Muricidae were published in the same year: Radwin & D’Attilio (1976) and Fair (1976). Knowledge on the family has, however, increased enormously during the last forty years. Many new species and new genera have been added and progress in phylogenetic analysis has changed the view of the subfamily classification. The goal of Fossil and Recent Muricidae of the World is to fill this gap of 45 years and provide a new synthesis, taking into account these additions and progress. The first volume, published in 2011, was dedicated to the Muricinae. This new volume is dedicated to the Muricopsinae Radwin & D’Attilio, 1971. This subfamily, as traditionally conceived, includes 16 genera, but it likely constitutes a polyphyletic assemblage. The authors divided it into five informal groups: 1°) the Muricopsinae (s.s.) group (the best candidates to form the monoyphyly of the subfamily) including the nominotypical genus of the subfamily: Muricopsis, Zetekopsis nov. gen., Murexsul, Rolandiella, Xastilia, Acanthotrophon, Propefavartia Merle nov. gen., Favartia, Pygmaepterys and Pazinotus; 2°) the Homalocantha-Eofavartia-Subpterynotus group (possible stem group) including: Homalocantha, Eofavartia and Subpterynotus; 3°) the Pradoxa-Bizetiella assemblage (very doubtful in the subfamily) including: Pradoxa and Bizetiella. The subfamily place of the two last groups should be regarded as provisional. These 16 genera represent together around 375 valid names of extinct (90) and extant (285) species. The taxonomic treatment of each genus includes a detailed description of the type species with one or several related text-figures, a comment on the limits of variation and the generic characters, a list of the extinct and extant species (with synonyms) and a geological part including the first appearance and the stratigraphic range. As much as possible, we tried to illustrate all the species recorded in the literature. Three hundred and seventy-one species are represented in 153 plates or 99% of the total. Of these 371 species, around 89% (333 species) are illustrated by their type material.

New taxa: Muricopsis landaui nov. sp, Zetekopsis nov. gen., Propefavartia Merle nov. gen. and Exquisitor nov. gen. in the subfamily Muricinae (Appendix 1) for species erroneously attributed to Subpterynotus.

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