AMMOTHEIDAE, Dohrn, 1881

Mead, A., Carlton, J. T., Griffiths, C. L. & Rius, M., 2011, Introduced and cryptogenic marine and estuarine species of South Africa, Journal of Natural History 45 (39 - 40), pp. 2463-2524 : 2490

Family AMMOTHEIDAE

Ammothella appendiculata (Dohrn, 1881) Introduced (= Ammothella indica Stock, 1954 )

This sea spider was collected in the fouling of a ship’s hull in Durban Bay in 1951 where the vessel had been solely resident. It was first recorded by Stock (1954, 1959) as Ammothella indica , a species described from Singapore, and was synonymized with Ammothella appendiculata by Bamber (2000). The port-dwelling sea spiders of South Africa have not been resurveyed in recent decades, but we have no reason to suspect that Ammothella appendiculata no longer occurs in Durban Bay, and we retain it on the South African faunal list. Ammothella appendiculata was described from the Mediterranean, where it still occurs, but is otherwise patchily distributed around the Atlantic rim, being recorded, for example, outside the Mediterranean from the West Indies and Florida ( Child 1974) and Brazil ( Ribeiro et al. 1982). In contrast, largely under the name Ammothella indica , it is reported as widely distributed throughout the western Pacific Ocean ( Bamber 2000), where it occurs in natural habitats (such as coral rubble) and where closely related endemic species occur ( Child 1988). It also occurs in the Red Sea ( Stock 1957), to where it may have been carried from the Mediterranean, or from the Pacific. We tentatively suggest that it may be native to the Pacific Ocean and is a nineteenth-century (or earlier) introduction to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, with ship-fouling. Alternatively, Mediterranean–Atlantic stocks may represent distinct species, a question that is best approached genetically (R. Bamber, personal communication, 2009). It may have been introduced to South Africa in ship fouling or in ballast water.