Atubaria heterolopha is a species of hemichordates in the monotypic genus Atubaria and in the monotypic family Atubaridae. This taxon belongs to the pterobranchian order Cephalodiscida. It was described by Tadao Sato in 1936 from specimens found feeding on a colony of the hydrozoan Dycoryne conferta in Sagami Bay, Japan.
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Atubaria in the context of Pterobranchia
Pterobranchia, members of which are often called pterobranchs, is a class of small worm-shaped animals. They belong to the Hemichordata, and live in secreted tubes on the ocean floor. Pterobranchia feed by filtering plankton out of the water with the help of cilia attached to tentacles. There are about 25 known living pterobranch species in three genera, which are Rhabdopleura, Cephalodiscus, and Atubaria. On the other hand, there are several hundred extinct genera, some of which date from the Cambrian Period.
The class Pterobranchia was established by Ray Lankester in 1877. It contained, at that time, the single genus Rhabdopleura. Rhabdopleura was at first regarded as an aberrant polyzoon, but when the Challenger report on Cephalodiscus was published in 1887, it became clear that Cephalodiscus, the second genus now included in the order, had affinities with the Enteropneusta.
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