Gordius robustus Leidy, 1851

Schmidt-Rhaesa, Andreas & Menzel, Lena, 2005, Central American and Caribbean species of horsehair worms (Nematomorpha), with the description of three new species, Journal of Natural History 39 (7), pp. 515-529 : 527

Gordius robustus Leidy, 1851

The genus Gordius is the only genus of freshwater nematomorphs which contains species that lack any cuticular structure but have a smooth cuticle. Despite this poverty of taxonomically expressive characters, surprisingly many species are described. However, Schmidt-Rhaesa et al. (2003) regarded several such species (from North America) as synonymous to Gordius robustus . This could also account for the Central American and Caribbean species of Gordius which have been reported to date: G. platyura from Jamaica ( Baird 1853), G. californicus ( Camerano 1915) and G. subspiralis from Mexico ( Camerano 1898). Gordius villoti is a European species and it is likely that the specimens reported by Caballero (1936) from Mexico (see Table I) also belong to G. robustus .

Distribution

New records. Mexico: Nuevo León, Pozo del Primero de Septiembre, one male, coll. 25 July 2000 by C. Savvas; Cueva de Oyamel , Conrado Castillo, Tamanlipas, one female, coll. 19 March 1978 by A. G. Grubbs et al. (both records Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, USA, no accession number) . Trinidad: shallow spring, Mt Samana , one male (Natural History Museum, London, accession number 1942.10.21.288) .