THE KANSAS UNIVERSITY 



SCIENCE BULLETIN 



^■oL. XIV.J October, 1922. [No. 6. 



A New Subterranean Isopod from Kansas. 



Ccecidotea tridentata (Crustacea). 



By H. B. HUNGERFORD, 



Professor of Entomology, University of Kansas. 



IN MARCH of 1919, Mr. William Hoffmann, field assistant in our 

 department of entomology at the University of Kansas, brought 

 to me for determination some specimens of an isopod which he 

 had taken from a cistern in Lawrence, Kan. 



They prove to belong to a new species of the genus Coecidotea. 

 For them I propose the name Coecidotea tridentata, because the 

 propodus of the first pair of legs of the male is armed with three 

 conspicuous processes, a character which separates them from the 

 previously described species. 



The crustacean genus Coecidotea Pack., as the name implies, is 

 characterized by the absence of eyes, by the fact that the terminal 

 segment of the body is much longer than broad, and by the elongate, 

 narrow body. An analytical key to the genus was given by Harriet 

 Richardson in her monograph of the isopods of North America, in 

 1905. There were known at that time four species, namely, C. stygia 

 Pack., C. nickajackensis Pack., C. richardsonce Hay and C. smithsii 

 Ulrich. Doctor Ortmann, 1918, in chapter XXV of "Fresh-water 

 Biology," had Miss Richardson's work in mind when he said there 

 were four species of the genus and that they are found in caves, 

 springs issuing from caves, and artesian wells. However, in 1911, 

 in the Pomona College Journal of Entomology, volume 3, No. 3, 

 Blanche Stafford described a fifth species, namely, Coecidotea ala- 

 bamensis, from a well in Auburn, Ala. 



The following table will serve to separate the six species of the 

 genus now known: 



(175) 



