Sternaspis scutata

Sternaspis scutata (Renier in Ranzani, 1817)

Sternaspis scutata, with the authorship given as (Ranzani), (Ranzani, 1807), Ranzani, 1817, (Ranzani, 1817), (Renier) or (Renier, 1807), is also used as a valid name and species today, being found in regional faunas such as Fauvel‚ 1927, 1953; Uschakov, 1955; Imajima & Hartman, 1964; Day‚ 1967, 1973; Gibbs, 1971; Hartman, 1974; Hobson & Banse, 1981; Campoy, 1982; Jirkov, 2001 and Simboura & Nicolaidou, 2001, although it is probably not a cosmopolitan species (Petersen, 2000; Sendall & Salazar-Vallejo, 2013).

The species was first published as Mentula cucurbitacea marina Plancus, 1760, but this work was not consistently binomial and the species was not well described.

The species was also mentioned in the unpublished work Renier [1807] with the Italian name Echinorinco Scudato and the Latin name Echinorynchus Clypeatus. As stated above, Renier often named his species in Latin, Italian and French, which has caused some confusion in the past.

The name was made available (validly published and with a complete description) as Thalassema scutatum by Ranzani, 1817, who described the species using Renier’s material and unpublished papers, saying that he was putting the species Echinorhynchus scutatus Renier into his new genus Thalassema Ranzani, 1817 . As Ranzani credits the name to Renier, we feel that we should follow that precedent and call the species Sternaspis scutata (Renier in Ranzani, 1817).