IDOTEIDAE, Samouelle, 1819

Mead, A., Carlton, J. T., Griffiths, C. L. & Rius, M., 2011, Introduced and cryptogenic marine and estuarine species of South Africa, Journal of Natural History 45 (39 - 40), pp. 2463-2524 : 2482

Family IDOTEIDAE

Synidotea hirtipes (Milne-Edwards, 1840) Cryptogenic Synidotea variegata Collinge, 1917 Cryptogenic

Chapman and Carlton (1991) proposed that these two isopods were cryptogenic in the South African fauna. We note them here because they represent a broad guild of peracarid crustaceans (including amphipods, isopods and tanaids) that occur in fouling communities from the West African coast to the Indo-Pacific, almost all of which distributions are now regarded as “natural” but whose aboriginal ranges, before the advent of interoceanic shipping, we in fact do not know. To list all of these here would almost comprise another monograph. Synidotea variegata , for example, occurs both in fouling communities and in littoral algal communities from the Indo-Pacific to the west coast of Africa ( Chapman and Carlton 1991). It occurs as far north as Cameroon and Namibia on the Atlantic, in Port Elizabeth and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and with further records throughout the greater Red Sea and Indian Ocean region ( Mozambique, Madagascar, Suez Canal, India, Sri Lanka). Synidotea hirtipes occurs, often in fouling, from the west coast of Africa ( Namibia) around South Africa and north to the Suez Canal. Indeed, its type locality is the “ Cape of Good Hope” and records include Saldanha, Table Bay, Simon’s Bay, Cape St Blaize (Mossel Bay) and Port Elizabeth ( Benedict 1897; Chapman and Carlton 1991). As Chapman and Carlton note (and as is applicable to a great many potential candidate taxa), these distributions also mirror the great shipping routes from China and India to around Africa and Europe, commencing centuries ago.