In 1822,
Férussac introduced the vernacular family “les Pleurobranches” to refer to known members of the current family
Pleurobranchidae. In 1832, in the second volume of
Histoire naturelle des vers of the
Encyclopédie Méthodique by
Deshayes, the same term was also used to refer to a higher-level group containing the genera
Pleurobranchaea and
Pleurobranchus, also grouped as “les Pleurobranches”, and
Siphonaria and
Umbrella, grouped as "les Ombrelles". The term was later latinized by Herrmannsen in 1847 as the suborder Pleurobranchia. Several spelling and rank
emendations followed. In Gray (1840b) it was emended to order Pleurobranchiata, containing the families
Aplysiidae,
Bullidae,
Pleurobranchidae,
Pterotracheidae, and
Umbrellidae, in Pelseneer (1906) to “tribe” Pleurobranchomorpha, and in Golikov & Starobogatov (1989) to order Pleurobranchiformes and suborder Pleurobranchioidei. In the
taxonomy of Bouchet & Rocroi (2005), Pleurobranchomorpha is used and ranked as a subclade sister to the subclade
Nudibranchia within the clade
Nudipleura. Under this taxonomy it contained the superfamily
Pleurobranchoidea, itself containing the single family Pleurobranchidae. In 2017, Bouchet and colleagues emended the spelling and rank of Pleurobranchomorpha to order Pleurobranchida and separated some of the members of Pleurobranchidae into the additional families
Pleurobranchaeidae and
Quijotidae, all within the superfamily Pleurobranchoidea. In 2023, Moles and colleagues included in Pleurobranchida the new superfamily
Tomthompsonioidea, containing the family
Tomthompsoniidae with the single genus
Tomthompsonia. This analysis recovered the following phylogenetic tree, based on a
maximum likelihood analysis rooted in
Acteonoidea: }} As such, the following taxa are recognised in the order Pleurobranchida: • Superfamily
Pleurobranchoidea • Family
Pleurobranchidae • Family
Pleurobranchaeidae • Family
Quijotidae • Superfamily
Tomthompsonioidea • Family
Tomthompsoniidae ==References==