Deep-sea Leuconidae (Cumacea, Peracarida) in the south-eastern Atlantic
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Deep-sea Leuconidae (Cumacea, Peracarida) in the south-eastern Atlantic Ute Mühlenhardt-Siegel
Received: 25 March 2010 / Revised: 16 June 2010 / Accepted: 22 June 2010 / Published online: 17 July 2010 # Senckenberg, Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer 2010
Abstract The Leuconidae of the deep eastern Atlantic obtained during the German expedition DIVA II and the French expeditions ZAIANGO and BIOZAIRE 1 to 3 were analysed. Thirteen more or less frequently occuring leuconid species were found, including ten new deep-sea species from the Cape, Angola and Guinea Basin. The most speciose (ten species) genus is Leucon with three species in the subgenus Crymoleucon, four species in the subgenus Epileucon, one species in the subgenus Leucon and two species in the subgenus Makrauloleucon. A new genus— Afroleucon—is described, having penial lobes and only one pair of pleopods in males. One species each belongs to the genera Bytholeucon and Eudorella. Only three species, Leucon (Makrauloleucon) brigittehilbigae MühlenhardtSiegel 2005b, Leucon (Leucon) homorhynchus Bishop 1981a and Leucon (Epileucon) cf tenuirostris form A Bishop 1981b, were already known. The new species are: Afroleucon enigmatica n.g., Leucon (Crymoleucon) lufupa, L. (Crymoleucon) kafunta, L. (Crymoleucon) galeronae, L. (Epileucon) kapinga, Leucon (Epileucon) paraspiniventris, L. (Epileucon) paralongirostris, Leucon (Makrauloleucon) moritzi, Eudorella angolensis, and Bytholeucon kaingo. Keywords Cumacea . Leuconidae . New genus . New species . Deep sea . South east Atlantic
U. Mühlenhardt-Siegel (*) Deutsches Zentrum für marine Biodiversitätsforschung, Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, 20146 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction The DIVA project (DIVersity of the abyssal Atlantic benthos) is part of the the international DIVERSITAS program that aims to analyse the biological resources of the Atlantic. The major scientific questions of the DIVA project are the latitudinal gradient of species-richness of the deep Atlantic and the influence of natural (biotic and abiotic) factors on diversity, while the projects ZAIANGO and BIOZAIRE focus on the effect of agriculture and climate change in Africa on the benthos of the continental slope off Angola. While, in the DIVA I project, the focus was on the Angola Basin, the expedition DIVA II concentrated investigations on the Cape Basin, the northern part of the Angola Basin, and especially the Guinea Basin. Additional cumacean specimens from the coastal part of the Angola Basin were provided by Ifremer, Brest (France). The cumaceans of the Angola Basin obtained during the DIVA I expedition yielded a high number of new species (Mühlenhardt-Siegel 2003, 2005a, b, c, d, e), many of them only represented by single specimens, which is not unusual for the deep sea. The following study concentrates on the family Leuconidae, which is, aside from the family Nannastacidae, the most speciose cumacean taxon in this part of the deep Atl
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