[1] According to the World Register of Marine Species, the following genera belong to this family:[2] Charles Cleveland Nutting, an American zoologist, wrote the first survey of what he then called 'Plumularidæ' of America in 1900.

His son Alexander Agassiz recognized six species.

Nutting gives descriptions and figures of about one hundred and twenty-one species!

He writes: It is now evident that the West Indian region is the richest in plumularian life of any area of equal size in the world.

Not even the Australian region, hitherto regarded as by far the most prolific in these exceedingly graceful organisms, can equal our own southern waters in profusion of genera and species.