WIGLEY and BURNS: DISTRIBUTION AND BIOLOGY OF MYSIDS 



lected off the coasts of Louisiana, South Caro- 

 lina, and North Carolina. 



The NMFS collection contains three specimens 

 from three stations located off the southeastern 

 coast of the United States (Figure 13; Burns 

 and Wig-ley, Table 14). Their geographic dis- 

 tribution is from just north of Cape Hatteras, 



N.C., to Fort Pierce, Fla. Size range is 4.5 to 

 5.0 mm; all are females. They were taken in 

 shallow water, 8 to 26 m, on sandy sediments. 

 Little is known about the biology of this species, 

 and the few specimens in the NMFS collection 

 provide no additional information on spawning 

 or length of life. 



Figure 13. — Geographic distribution of Promysis atlant- 

 ica based on specimens in the collection at the NMFS 

 Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. 



Tribe MYSINI 

 Mysis mixta Lilljeborg, 1852 



This boreal mysid occurs in the Eastern At- 

 lantic region from the White Sea, Spitsbergen, 

 Scandinavia and southward to the Baltic Sea, 

 and westward to Iceland. In the Western At- 

 lantic region it has been reported from Green- 

 land, eastern Canada, and the eastern coast of 

 the United States as far south as Cape Cod, 

 Mass. In the Gulf of Maine it has been most 

 frequently reported from off the eastern coast 

 of Massachusetts and from a few localities off 

 the Maine coast (Smith, 1879; Rathbun, 1905; 

 Tattersall, 1951; and others). 



This species is represented by 382 specimens 

 from 45 samples in the NMFS collection (Fig- 

 ure 14; Burns and Wigley, Table 15). The ma- 

 jority of specimens, including all adults, were 

 taken in the western part of the Gulf of Maine 

 between Cape Cod, Mass., and the central Maine 

 coast. The first records of this species from 

 south of Cape Cod were collected in the region 

 off Rhode Island and southeastern Long Island, 

 N.Y. The location of the southernmost sample 

 is lat 40°36' N and long 71°33' W, approximately 

 55 km southeast of Montauk Point, N.Y. All 26 

 specimens from these six southern samples are 

 immatures 10.5 to 20.1 mm in length ; they were 

 collected in June and September. 



Water depths at all NMFS collecting sites 

 range from 29 to 159 m. Bottom sediments at 

 these localities consist of a variety of types 

 ranging from fine-textured clays to gravel. Most 

 of the samples, however, come from intermediate 

 types of sediment: silt-clay ( 38 '^ f ), glacial till 

 (27'"r), and sand (22%). Only a small per- 

 centage of samples represent other bottom 

 types: silt-sand (7/^), gravel (4Cr), and clay 

 (1%). 



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