Pycnogonum cessaci Bouvier, 1911

Scarabino, Fabrizio, Lucena, Rudá Amorim, Munilla, Tomás, Soler-Membrives, Anna, Ortega, Leonardo, Schwindt, Evangelina, López, Guzmán, María, José & Christoffersen, Martin Lidsey, 2019, Pycnogonida (Arthropoda) from Uruguayan waters (Southwest Atlantic): annotated checklist and biogeographic considerations, Zootaxa 4550 (2), pp. 185-200 : 194

Pycnogonum cessaci Bouvier, 1911

Distribution: East Pacific ( Panama); West Atlantic ( Uruguay; Brazil; Antilles; Venezuela; Colombia; Panama; SE coast of USA); East Atlantic (tropical coast of Africa, Cape Verde Is.) ( Stock 1975, 1990, 1992; Child 1979; Carranza et al. 2007a; Müller & Krapp 2009).

Uruguayan records: Carranza et al. (2007a, as P. pamphorum ): littoral.

Remarks: Pycnogonum pamphorum Marcus, 1940 and P. leticiae Mello-Leitão, 1945 are junior synonyms of P. cessaci , according to Stock (1975, 1992) and Child (1979). P. cessaci has an amphi-Atlantic distribution (east and west) in the tropics and subtropics ( Stock 1990, Müller & Krapp 2009) and in the Pacific coast of Panama ( Child 1979). It is also found in shallow waters among algae, hydroids, bryozoans and sponges, which are organisms commonly found in fouling communities in shallow-water marine systems. These communities are particularly composed by species that occur in different oceans which are commonly transported through different human commercial activities, such as shipping and aquaculture. There is no obvious natural dispersal mechanisms to explain the amphi-Atlantic distribution of P. cessaci . Its presence in fouling communities and its biogeographical history, which does not permit us to ascribed it as being native or exotic, lead us to suspect is that this represents a cryptogenic species (following definition by Carlton 1996, 2009).