Homola minima Guinot & Richer de Forges, 1995

Souza-Filho, Jesser Fidelis De, 2017, Deep sea decapod crustaceans of São Pedro and São Paulo Archipelago, Equatorial Atlantic, Brazil, Zootaxa 4324 (2), pp. 331-347 : 339-340

Homola minima Guinot & Richer de Forges, 1995

( Figure 6 )

Thelxiope barbata —Rathbun, 1937: 63, fig. 16, tbl. 17, pl. 15, figs. 1,2;—Chace, 1940: 8.

Homola barbata —Williams, 1984: 261, fig. 193;—Melo, 1985: 32; 1996: 75, unnumbered fig; 1999: 440, fig. 2;—Melo et al., 1998: 440;—Nizinski, 2003: 123. [not Homola barbata ( Fabricius, 1793) ]

Homola minima Guinot and Richer de Forges, 1995: 326 , figs. 8c,d, f, 9b.;— Martin & Zimmerman, 2001: 412; Nizinski, 2003: 123;—Felder et al., 2009b: 1072;— Tavares & Lemaitre, 2014: 514, figs. 6, 7, 8, 9.

Material examined. One specimen with 47,3 mm CL e 38,5 mm CW, male, MOUFPE 15261 , São Pedro e São Paulo Archipelago (0°55'681''N e 29°19' 804''W), 470 m, 12/29/2013.

Diagnosis. Small species, carapace urn-shaped; rostrum bifurcate at tip, one spine on each side at base of rostrum, one at outer orbital angle; eyestalks long, slender at base. Cheliped surface granulated and hairy. Pereopod 5 folded forward over back, yellowish-brown or reddish-brown hairs, spines red; merus with distal end reaching the cervical groove.

Distribution. Homola minima is distributed in the Western Atlantic, from Massachusetts to Florida in the Northeastern coast of the United States, including Bahamas, Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, Suriname, Brazil and Uruguay. It occurs in depths ranging between 55 and 700 m. ( Tavares & Lemaitre, 2014; Guinot & Richer de Forges, 1995). This is the first record of this to the São Pedro e São Paulo Archipelago.

Remarks. Homola minima Guinot & Richer de Forges, 1995 is very similar to Homola barbata ( Fabricius, 1793) . According to Tavares and Lemaitre (2014), both species show a great ontogenetic variation in the diagnostic characters originally used by Guinot & Richer de Forges (1995). Indeed, the only character that can be used to distinguish these species is the distal end of the merus of the pereopod 5, which reaches the cervical groove, at maximum, whereas it is distinctly over the cervical groove in H. barbata .

Figures

FIGURE 6. Homola minima Guinot & Richer de Forges, 1995, collected off São Pedro e São Paulo Archipelago, Brazil, MOUFPE 15261. Scale bars 10 mm