Arbaciella elegans Mortensen 1910

Arbaciella elegans is a species of sea urchin of the family Arbaciidae. Their armour is covered with spines. It is placed in the genus Arbacia and lives in the sea. Arbaciella elegans was first scientifically described in 1910 by Ole Theodor Jensen Mortensen.

Many record of Arbaciella elegans (namely those based on a dark-skinned morphotype) from the Mediterranean and north-east Atlantic in fact are misidentified juveniles of another arbaciid, namely Arbacia lixula. Genetical characterization of material from the Azores (Kroh et al. 2011) and the Canarias (López et al. 2013) confirm the morphological data and clearly show that the sequences from such such individuals fall within the Arbacia lixula clade.