A Parasitic Copepod, Pupulina flores, Redescribed after Forty Years

Abstract

In 1892 P. J. van Beneden described and figured among some caligids from Africa and the Azores a new genus and species to which he gave the name Pupulina flores. He claimed to have found both sexes of the new parasite, but acknowledged that he had described as male and female of his species two copepods which had previously been designated by different names. They were found upon the same host, a devil-fish, and he believed that they were of the same species. In this, however, he was mistaken, for the specimen he described as the male was really a young female of an entirely different species. Owing to this mistake, together with the very imperfect description of both sexes, Bassett-Smith in 1899 denied the validity of the new genus and transferred Beneden's species to the well-known genus Lepeophtheirus. Following this lead the present author placed it in a key to the species of Lepeophtheirus published in 1905, and it has remained there up to the present time.