Gammaropsis Liljeborg 1855

Hughes, Lauren E. & Lowry, James K., 2006, New species of Amphipoda (Crustacea: Peracarida) from the Solitary Islands, New South Wales, Australia, Zootaxa 1222, pp. 1-52 : 33-34

Gammaropsis Liljeborg 1855

Gammaropsis is a problematic genus with several intergrading subgenera, some of which are apparently polyphyletic ( J.L. Barnard 1973; Barnard & Karaman 1991; Conlan 1993). Krapp­Schickel & Myers (1979) divided the Mediterranean regional fauna of Gammaropsis into two groups based on a collective of toothed or smooth characters of the pleonites and urosomites, and the epistome length. This division has been further applied to Irish species by Myers & McGrath (1982). This classification, however, was not able to be extended to the southern hemisphere fauna ( Myers 1985, 1995; Appadoo & Myers 2004), which have a combination of toothed and smooth characters, including the Australian species described here. Myers (1985) recognised the need for more taxonomic work in this group.

The new species described below belongs in the subgenus G. ( Gammaropsis ) based on a reduced gnathopod 2 carpus, multiarticulate accessory flagellum and uniform anterior coxa. There are now eight species of Gammaropsis recorded from Australia ( Lowry & Stoddart 2003); all are in the subgenus Gammaropsis , except for G. (Paranaenia) dentifera ( Haswell, 1879) .