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.