ON THE OCCURRENCE OF GNATHOPHYLLEPTUM TELLEI D’UDEKEM D’ACOZ, 2001 (DECAPODA, GNATHOPHYLLIDAE) IN ST HELENA, SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN BY

• Main Author: Sammy De Grave
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: St. Helena; South Atlantic Ocean
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.648.1843; http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/27265/27265.pdf

St Helena is one of the worlds most isolated tropical islands, situated in the South Atlantic, approximately 1950 km distance from south-west Africa, and 3300 km from South America, with its nearest landmass being Ascension Island (1300 km away). The island is comprised of a deeply eroded summit of a composite volcano, approximately 16 × 10 km in size, with several rocky outcrops. The marine habitats are poorly known, and comprise a mixture of rocky drop-offs and flat areas of sand and cobbles. Manning & Chace (1990) summarized the known decapod fauna of St Helena, which then amounted to 35 species. Given the geological age of the island (14 million years) this is somewhat surprising, as the geologically much younger Ascension Island (1.0-1.5 million years) harbours 74 species, and is probably linked to a paucity of records rather than a true low level of faunal richness. Of the 35 species listed by Manning & Chace (1990), only 6 are carideans shrimps, most of which are widespread in the eastern Atlantic. During a recent visit to the USNM (Washington, D.C.) a single example of the recently described Gnathophylleptum tellei d’Udekem d’Acoz, 2001 (USNM