Atolla vanhoeffeni Russell 1957

Atolla vanhoeffeni Russell, 1957 Distribution See Fig. 1, Mendoza-Becerril et al. (2025). Notes This species belongs to the family Atollidae, a monogeneric family containing 12 valid Atolla species (Collins et al. 2025). However, several species remain taxonomically uncertain; only A. vanhoeffeni, A. chuni Vanhöffen, 1902 and A. gigantea Maas, 1897 are well documented. Atolla vanhoeffeni can be readily recognised by the presence of eight pigment spots on the subumbrellar wall near the gastric cavity (Matsumoto et al. 2022); notably, A. vanhoeffeni is the only species in the genus with a semi-cosmopolitan distribution (Collins et al. 2025). In contrast, A. chuni and A. gigantea are only mentioned in relation to their type localities with no further distributional data available. While the semi-cosmopolitan distribution of A. vanhoeffeni makes its presence in the Caribbean plausible, recent integrative studies have revealed cryptic species within Atolla (Matsumoto et al. 2022), raising questions about the reliability of morphology-based identifications. Without voucher material or detailed morphological description from Phillips (1972), this record should be treated as tentative (Atolla cf. vanhoeffeni) pending confirmation Matsumoto et al. (2022).