Leptochelia mortenseni ( Lang, 1973 ) BAMBER, ROGER N, 2013

BAMBER, ROGER N, 2013, A re-assessment of Konarus Bamber, 2006 and sympatric leptocheliids from Australasia, and of Pseudoleptochelia Lang, 1973 (Crustacea: Peracarida: Tanaidacea), Zootaxa 3694 (1), pp. 1-39 : 9

Leptochelia mortenseni ( Lang, 1973) comb. nov.

Pseudoleptochelia mortenseni Lang, 1973 , 215–216, figs 15, 16a–f (part)

Material: Lectotype female ZMUC-CRU-7400; one female, four neuters (ZMUC-CRU-4396), paralectotypes, “ Tobago ”. ( Zoological Museum , University of Copenhagen).

Remarks. As discussed above, the mature females of Lang’s original species are distinct from his “small” females and the males. Lang’s type material, in two tubes held at the Zoological Museum Copenhagen, has been re-examined.

The tube labelled ZMUC-CRU-7400 “ Holotype ” contains two smaller inner tubes plugged with cotton-wool.

Inner tube 1 contains the pereopods 1 to 4 and 6, cheliped, antenna, and pleon of a mature female which accord with Lang’s (1973) figures 15 and 16 a–f.

Inner tube 2 contains the maxilliped, right mandible, pereopod 5 and antennule of the same female, plus the chelipeds, and antennulae and antennae (attached to the rostral half of the carapace) of a male (which accord with Lang’s figures 16 h–j). I have moved the female parts to tube 1.

Clearly, this material does not represent a holotype (being two specimens), rather it is most of the figured material. The only complete figuring, and what detailed description there is, in Lang (1973) is of the “larger” female. Furthermore, his diagnosis of the genus (see Appendix 1) clearly refers to this female, and not the “small” female, nor to the male. Therefore, the female fragments in ZMUC-CRU-7400 are herein designated as the lectotype of Pseudoleptochelia mortenseni Lang, 1973 . This female does not accord with the females of Pseudoleptochelia (see below), and this taxon is moved to Leptochelia , from which its only distinction sensu Lang (1973) was the presence of only two distal setae on the maxilliped basis.

The male from ZMUC-CRU-7400 is dealt with below, under Parakonarus .

The remaining material is in a tube labelled ZMUC-CRU-4396 “ Syntypes ”, and comprises five specimens of Leptochelia mortenseni comb. nov. (see material, above), one antennule of L. mortenseni (which is somewhat flattened, obviously at some point slide-mounted, accords with Lang’s fig. 15c, and so has been added to the lectotype tube), together with 27 specimens of a Parakonarus , dealt with below.

With only two maxilliped-basis setae, Leptochelia mortenseni is only comparable with leptocheliids of other genera, such as Heterotanais . Within Leptochelia , the only species to have a uropod exopod as short as about half the length of the proximal endopod segment have a significantly more slender basis to pereopod 1 ( L. savignyi (Krøyer, 1842) ; L. neapolitana Sars, 1882 ; L. lusei Bamber & Bird, 1997 ; L. tarda Larsen & Rayment, 2002 ).

The only species of Leptochelia in litt. from the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico region are L. rapax Harger, 1879 , L. forresti (Stebbing, 1896) , L. longimana Shiino, 1963 sensu Lang, 1973 , “ L. dubia ” (Krøyer, 1842) and L. tenuicula Makkaveeva 1968 (see Heard et al., 2004; Suárez-Morales et al., 2004), but all of these taxa have five or six uropod endopod segments in the adult female.