Peniagone Théel, 1882

Genus Peniagone Théel, 1882 View in CoL

Diagnosis. (amended from Hansen, 1975). Dorsal papillae anteriorly placed, usually forming a velum. Ossicles primary crosses or cross-shaped bodies with variable arms and apophyses arising from a central stem. Calcareous ring consisting of five isolated pieces, each having a varying number of arms.

Remarks. Benthic and swimming genus, worldwide except for theArctic with high species diversity in the Pacific and Antarctic ( Gebruk et al., 2014). Peniagone ossicles are of an adapted cross shape, with arms always arising from a central beam or stem. Of the 35 currently accepted species of Peniagone , five have been previously recorded for Australia: P. affinis , P. azorica , P. challengeri , P. vignoni , and P. vitrea (ALA, 2024; WoRMS, 2024). Two new records for Australia of known species are recorded here: P. coccinea and P. purpurea . Eighteen lots of Peniagone were recorded from the IOT voyages at depths of 2156–5414 m, with 12 lots further identified to OTU species level as follows: Peniagone cf azorica (1 lot), Peniagone cf challengeri (1 lot), P. coccinea (4 lots), P. purpurea (1 lot), P. vitrea (3 lots), Peniagone sp. MoV. 7320 (1 lot), Peniagone sp. MoV. 7321 (1 lot). Genus diagnosis was amended from Hansen (1975) to note apophyses and central stem. Peniagone is a well-supported, monophyletic genus in both the COI and 16S phylogenies (fig. S1). However, more molecular data is needed to resolve species-level relationships.