The Caymanostellidae is a family of rarely encountered wood-dwelling deep-sea sea-stars, with only six species, in two genera, described to date. During the COBERPES 5 expedition on board the RV ‘Justo Sierra’, off Tabasco, Gulf of Mexico in 2013, 12 specimens were recovered from a single piece of sunken wood. Herein we describe a new genus and species of caymanostellid, Crinitostella laguardai gen. nov., sp. nov. This species represents the shallowest known caymanostellid (418–427 m depth), and the first known occurrence of the Caymanostellidae from the Gulf of Mexico. The family Caymanostellidae displays affinities with several groups, such as Asterinidae and Korethrasteridae, making it difficult to infer its phylogenetic position evidenced by the myriad of contrasting phylogenetic hypotheses proposed. In an attempt to shed some light on the phylogenetic relationships of the family, sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of the new species were generated and combined with published data. As previously suggested, caymanostellids seem to be part of valvatacean polytomy rather than velatids.

中文翻译：

---

墨西哥湾木栖深海海星 (Asteroidea: Caymanostellidae) 新属和新种Crinitostella laguardai

Caymanostellidae 是一个很少遇到的居住在木头的深海海星家族，迄今为止仅描述了两个属的六种。2013 年，在墨西哥湾塔巴斯科附近的 RV“Justo Sierra”上进行 COBERPES 5 探险期间，从一块沉没的木头中发现了 12 个标本。在这里，我们描述了一个新属和新种的 caymanostellid，尖嘴角鲨将军 十一月，sp。十一月 该物种代表了已知最浅的 caymanostellid（418-427 m 深度），并且是墨西哥湾的第一个已知的 Caymanostellidae。Caymanostellidae 家族与几个群体（如 Asterinidae 和 Korethrasteridae）显示出亲缘关系，因此很难推断其系统发育位置，这由提出的无数对比系统发育假设所证明。为了阐明该家族的系统发育关系，生成了新物种的核和线粒体 DNA 序列并将其与已发表的数据相结合。如前所述，caymanostellids 似乎是 valvatacean polytomy 的一部分，而不是 velatids。