PHRONIMIDAE (AMPHIPODA, HYPERIIDEA) OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN

BY

CHANG-TAI SHIH National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa, Canada

Based on the material collected by the German Plankton Expedition, Vosseler (1901) revised one of the most confused families of hyperiid amphipods, the Phronimidae. All species known today were described in his excellent monograph, which became the most reliable reference of this family for other workers of this century. There are, however, problems in his work. Phronima a f f ini.r, a new species described by him from a single male specimen, has never been rediscovered except for a single doubtful record by Pirlot (1930). The problem of the male of Phro- nima pacifica and P. curvipe.r was left unsolved until Laval ( 1968) and Shih (1969). The weakest part of Vosseler's work, as pointed out by Shih, is that first, without presenting concrete evidence, he reduced Phroninaa .rolitaria to a variety of P. atlantica and second, his figure for the male P. colletti was actually based on a male specimen of another species, P. paci f ica. Because of this mis- leading information, all subsequent authors were satisfied with his arrangement of P. ?

TABL

f: female; m: male; j: juvenile, sex indeterminable