Some New Sand-Dwelling Copepods

Abstract

The copepods described in this paper come from two sources, the Firth of Clyde and the St Lawrence River. Several new species were collected from Balloch Bay on the Greater Cumbrae in 1935 and 1936 during an attempt to obtain some of the early species described from Scottish waters. The remainder were collected while working at the Biological Station at Trois Pistoles, Quebec, during a visit to Canada in 1937. The environment in Balloch Bay is composed of a fine muddy sand, strewn with boulders. The bay is on the eastern side of the island and therefore in a sheltered position. A description is given in Appendix III of The Biology of the Sea Shore, by Flattely & Walton (1922). The conditions under which the Canadian material was found will be dealt with in a later paper describing the remainder of the collection from the St Lawrence; it will be sufficient here to state that the conditions are essentially marine.Copepods from three allied genera are included here: Paramesochra T. Scott, 1892; Leptopsyllus T. Scott, 1894; and Remanea Klie, 1929. The first two have for some time been in a state of considerable confusion and it has been a matter of some doubt into which genus the various species should be placed. Several efforts have been made to clarify the position (notably by Klie, 1929 and Monard, 1935) but the more recent work of Kunz (1938) has produced a clear separation based on the presence or absence of an endopod on the second leg.