Raphitoma

Raphitoma is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Raphitomidae. This genus occurs in European waters, in the northern part of the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Atlantic Ocean along Cape Verde, West Africa and Angola. Raphitoma contains many species formerly assigned to Philbertia. Philbertia was synonymized with Raphitoma in 1990 because Dr. Philippe Bouchet did not consider valid the subdivision of species into different genera solely on the basis of differences during larval development. In describing Raphitoma, the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) relied on an unpublished database 'Nomenclator of Molluscan Supraspecific Names' by Bouchet P. & Rocroi J.-P. (2010). In December 2011, the WoRMS database still showed 21 species retaining the genus name Philbertia. In their publication 'A new operational classification of the Conoidea (Gastropoda)', Bouchet, Kantor et al. (2011) still recognize Philbertia as a valid genus in the Raphitomidae. As of the 2017 update to the 2005 restructuring of gastropod taxonomy, WoRMS recognizes Philbertia as a synonym of Raphitoma. Species within the genus Raphitoma include: