The Echinoid Directory

Conolampas A. Agassiz, 1883, p. 48

[=Pygastrides Loven, 1887, type species Pygastrides relictus Loven 1887 (=Conoclypus sigsbei A. Agassiz, 1878) (objective) ]

Diagnostic Features
  • Test of medium to large size, circular in outline, aboral side rather high, hemispherical to almost conical; oral side flat, scarcely sunken adorally.
  • Apical system monobasal with four genital pores; subcentral.
  • Petals long, straight, with narrow poriferous zones; open distally; pores subequal, circular and subconjugate. The two columns of pore-pairs a little unequal in length in the same petal.
  • Ambulacral plates beyond petals single pored.
  • Periproct situated on the flat oral surface, transverse.
  • Peristome pentagonal; slightly wider than long; subcentral.
  • Bourrelets: phyllodes slightly sunken creating \'pseudobourrelets\' which incorporate post-basicoronal plates, forming weakly rounded mounds close to peristome.
  • Phyllodes single pored with many pores arranged in three series in each half-ambulacrum.
  • Buccal pores present.
  • Tubercles perforate and crenulate; small and even.
Distribution
Recent, Indo-Pacific and Caribbean.
Name gender feminine
Type
Conoclypus sigsbei A. Agassiz, 1878, p. 190; by monotypy.
Species Included
  • C. diomedeae Mortensen, 1948; Recent, Philippines.
  • C. malayana Mortensen, 1948; Recent, Kei Islands, Indonesia.
  • C. murrayana Mortensen, 1948; Recent, Maldives.
  • C. sigsbei (A. Agassiz 1878); Recent, West Indies.
Classification and/or Status

Irregularia; Cassiduloida; Echinolampadidae.

Subjective junior synonym of Hypsoclypus Pomel, 1869.

Note that Conolampas Pomel, 1883, p. 63, type species Conoclypus bordae refers to a different taxon [=Macrolampas] and is a junior homonym.

Remarks

Conolampas is very similar to Hypsoclypus, in having long open parallel petals (that are slightly asymmetrical, the two columns of pore-pairs unequal in length in the same petal ), a circular ambital outline, and a distinctly flat oral surface, where the periproct is situated.

Agassiz, A. 1883. Reports on the results of the dredging of US coast survey steamer Blake. Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard 10 (1) 94 pp, 32 pls.

Mortensen (1948) distinguished Conolampas from Hypsoclypus by its much better developed phyllodes, believing that in Hypsoclypus the phyllodes were narrow and uniserial to the peristome. However, the type species of Hypsoclypus, H. lucae, has phyllodes that are as well developed as those of Conolampas and there seems to be no reason for keeping the two separate.

T. Mortensen. 1948. A monograph of the Echinoidea: 4 (1): Holectypoida, Cassiduloida. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 363 pp., 14 pls.

P. M. Kier. 1962. Revision of the cassiduloid echinoids. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 144 (3) 262 pp.