NO. 4 SCHMITT : STOMATOPODS 133 



of the open sea between the archipelagoes of the southern Pacific and the 

 shores of America seems to be a more efficient barrier than a compara- 

 tively recent land mass like the Isthmus of Panama. Thus, we have G. 

 chiragra and its variety platysoma occupying a wide area in the Indo- 

 Pacific region, but unknown in Hawaii and on the shores of the American 

 Continent. In the same way, G. oerstedii and its varieties festae^^ and 

 spinulosus occupy similar stations in the western Atlantic, West Indies, 

 and Pacific shores of tropical America." 



Ekman^'* and Balss^^ are wholly in accord with this view, which 

 seems to have the weight of evidence in its favor. As noted above, there 

 are 3 eastern Pacific stomatopods that are also found in the Atlantic 

 and not in the Indo-Pacific, and only one^^ found in the Indo-Pacific 

 that is not found in the Atlantic. 



Balss gives the following list of comparable, closely related, yet not 

 identical species from the Pacific and Atlantic sides of America, remark- 

 ing also that Hansen (see Remarks on p. 193) holds that Lysiosquilla 

 desaussurei from the west coast of Mexico and L. scabricauda from the 

 West Indies are identical : 



Pacific Atlantic 



Squllla panamensis Bigelow^'^ S. brasiliensis Caiman 



Squilla aculeata Bigelow S. empusa Say 



Squilla polita Bigelow S. quadrldens Bigelow 



Lysiosquilla decemspinosa Rathbun L. armata Smith 



"On the other hand," says Balss, "the relationships of the West 

 American to the Indo-Pacific fauna are not very pronounced, due to 



13 The fact that G. festae has been restored to full specific rank in this paper 

 in no wise alters Dr. Bigelow's argument. There are spiny or spinulose forms of the 

 G. oerstedii complex on both sides of America: G. oerstedii var. spinulosus 

 (Schmitt, Univ. Iowa Studies Nat. Hist., Vol. 10, p. 96, pi. 5, fig. 5, 1924) and var. 

 curacaoensis (Schmitt, Bijdr. Dierkunde, Amsterdam, Vol. 23, p. 80, pi. 8, fig. 6, 

 1924) in the Atlantic, and G. bahiahondensis, G. festae and its subspecies, laliber- 

 tadensis, and G. stanschi in the Pacific, to say nothing of the Pacific and Atlantic 

 forms of G. oerstedii proper which show some differences not yet deemed constant 

 enough or sharply enough drawn to warrant definite taxonomic distinction. 



14 Tiergeographie des Meeres, p. 56, 1935. 



15 Bronns Klassen und Ordnungen des Tierreichs, Vol. 5, Abt. 1, Book 6, pt. 2, 

 Stomatopoda, p. 141, 1938. 



^^ Hemisquilla stylifera; the Indo-Pacific (Australia only) representatives 

 may yet prove to be different; in the Atlantic there is for this species the closely 

 related (analogous species) H. braziliensis (Moreira). 



1''' See also Bigelow's quoted remarks on the "species of Squilla" above, p. 132. 



