Non-marine harpacticoid copepods of Australia. I. Canthocampptidae of the genus Canthocamptus Westwood s.lat. and Fibulacamptus, gen. nov., and including the description of a related new species of Canthocamptus from New Caledonia

Abstract

The external morphology of Canthocamptus s.lat. and Fibulacamptus, gen. nov. has been resurveyed and a number of new terms and abbreviations introduced. Separate keys are given to the females and males of these genera and of all their 28 Australian species, as well as a table of their setal formulae and maps of their respective distributions; 21 of the 28 species are new. The genus Canthocamptus, when defined as in section 6 for reasons given in section 3, contains 24 species which can be placed in six fairly well-defined groups; however, the previous descriptions of Australian Canthocamptus species are so lacking in detail that two of them must be regarded as completely unidentifiable. C. bidens (which is probably parthenogenetic anyway), C. longipes and C. sublaevis are known so far only as females and Canthocamptus sp. 1 from only a single male, each of the others described here being from both sexes. C. ablatifurcatus, sp. nov. from New Caledonia is described in Appendix 4; but other existing descriptions of non-Australian species are not sufficiently detailed to refer any of them to one or other of the six groups, to equate any of these groups to a named genus or subgenus of the Canthocamptidae, or to offer any basis for the much-needed revision of this family. Fibulacarnptus differs from all other harpacticoids in the grapnel-like outer terminal seta on the male P4exopod3, but is otherwise close to Canthocamptus as defined here; it contains four species, all new.

The genus Metacyclops Kiefer in Australia (Crustacea: Copepoda: Cyclopoida), with description of two new species

“…However, recent reexamination of that material by Fiers (2001) showed that Kiefer (1967) was not dealing with M. arnaudi at all and, furthermore, transferred both taxa into the newly described genus Meridiecyclops. Unfortunately, the type material of M. arnaudi is no longer available (Hamond, 1987), so the original description of Sars (1908), with its fine illustrations, is all that was left of the first Australian Metacyclops. An unnamed and as yet undescribed species of Metacyclops was reported by Timms and Morton (1988), but this genus does not appear to have a significant diversity in Australian surface waters, and certainly nothing that could be compared with other continents of the Southern Hemisphere (see Dussart and Defaye, 1985).…”

Two new subterranean Parastenocarididae (Crustacea, Copepoda, Harpacticoida) from Western Australia

“…Because of the occurrence of integumental windows in distantly related taxa, as well as of similar structures in several other crustacean groups other than copepods, Lang (1948) stated that they have no phylogenetic significance. However, within the Harpacticoida at the alpha-taxonomic level their form and location on the body are constant within species, and have been useful in species discrimination in the Canthocamptidae (Hamond 1987;Por and Hade11986;Hosfeld 1999). Although it is reasonable to assume that P. solitaria also belongs to the "minuta"-group, its position cannot be verified woithout males.…”

A human challenge: discovering and understanding continental copepod habitats

“…Lewis (1986) remarked on the analogous distribution of one harpacticoid genus of the damp forest, Loefflerella, which occurs in Patagonia, Chile and New Zealand, to that of the genus of semiterrestrial cladocerans, Bryospilus, known from Puerto Rico, Venezuela and New Zealand (Frey, 1980). The canthocamptid harpacticoid genus Fibulacamptus is confined to wet temperate southern Australia and Tasmania, mainly in semiterrestrial situations: a river, muddy gravel and dead leaves, and wet moss and leaf litter (Hamond, 1988). Antipodiella is endemic to New Zealand (Lewis, 1986).…”

“…strenuus Fischer, 1851, and Macrocyclops albidus. Some examples of species collected from road ruts include Canthocamptus australicus (Sars, 1908) in Australia (Hamond, 1988), Mesocyclops leuckarti (probably = M. aspericornis) in Guam (Watkins & Belk, 1975), and Metacyclops minutus (Claus, 1863) and several other species by Maier (1992Maier ( , 1998 and Maier et al (1998). Even footprints may serve as copepod microhabitats: Brehm (mentioned in Gurney, 1933: 221) found Diacyclops bicuspidatus (Claus, 1857) in the small pools formed by his own footprints in spongy woodland soil.…”

“…Seeps on rock outcrops where moss and algae grow may also hold copepods, usually common species such as B. pygmaeus, but sometimes rarer ones such as Speocyclops demetiensis (Scourfield, 1932) (Gurney, 1932;Scourfield, 1932Scourfield, , 1939 and Stolonicyclops heggiensis Reid & Spooner, 1998. Wet moss on rock faces was the home of several canthocamptids in Tasmania (Hamond, 1988).…”