Pectiniidae was a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

stony corals Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a m ...

, commonly known as chalice corals, but the name is no longer considered valid.

Taxonomy

The "robust" stony coral families of

Faviidae Mussidae is a family of stony coral in the order Scleractinia. Following a taxonomic revision in 2012, the family is now restricted to species found in the Atlantic Ocean, with Pacific species transferred to the new family Lobophylliidae. Many ...

Merulinidae Merulinidae is a family of reef-building stony corals. Characteristics All the genera in this family are colonial, reef-building corals. Skeletal structures are similar to those of Faviidae but are highly fused, without paliform lobes. The valle ...

, Mussidae and Pectiniidae, have traditionally been recognised on morphological grounds but recent molecular analysis has shown that these families are

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of conver ...

, the similarities between the species having occurred through

convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...

. A revised classification, proposed in 2012, places the Pacific species of Mussidae in a new family, Lobophylliidae and retains the taxon Mussidae for the Atlantic species. In the revision, the genera '' Echinomorpha'', '' Echinophyllia'' and '' Oxypora'' were transferred from Pectiniidae to Lobophylliidae, and the genera '' Mycedium'', '' Pectinia'' and '' Physophyllia'' were transferred to Merulinidae. The family Pectiniidae was abolished.

Genera

The World Register of Marine Species used to include the following

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

in the family: *'' Echinomorpha'' - Transferred to Lobophylliidae *'' Echinophyllia'' - Transferred to Lobophylliidae *'' Mycedium'' - Transferred to Merulinidae *'' Oxypora'' - Transferred to Lobophylliidae *'' Pectinia'' - Transferred to Merulinidae *'' Physophyllia'' - Transferred to Merulinidae

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3325042 Scleractinia Cnidarian families Obsolete animal taxa