4 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 295 



Bahama collections. I was priviledged to study the Challenger lecto- 

 types of Brady (1880) while they were on loan to Harbans S. Puri, 

 Florida State Geological Survey, from the British Museum (Natural 

 History). Benson, Kornicker, and I. Gregory Sohn (U.S. Geological 

 Survey) contributed valuable suggestions from their reading of the 

 manuscript but must not be held responsible for any of the opinions 

 contained herein. 



Taxonomy 



Previous classifications.^M tiller (1894) described carapaces and 

 soft parts of 10 species of ^'Bairdia" and assigned them to one of two 

 groups on the following criteria: Group 1 (suhdeltoidea group): 

 anterior margin of both valves without denticles, median segment 

 of copulatory organ penetrated by copulatory tube (.S. obscura, 

 decipiens, jrequens, mediterranea, and minor); Group 2: anterior 

 margin of left valve with denticles and of right valve with or without 

 denticles, median segment of copulatory organ not perforated by 

 copulatory tube (J5. longevaginata, corpulenta, serrata, reticulata, and 

 raripila). Miiller also recognized and described other characters with 

 taxonomic significance, as established below, whose distribution is 

 not congruent with these two groups. 



Kornicker (1961), combining Miiller's species with five species of 

 Bahaman ''Bairdia," recognized four groups of "Bairdia'' plus 

 Bairdoppilata based on the morphology of the male copulatory organ. 

 He noted that these divisions resulted in a coincident clustering of 



Table 1. — Comparison of the proposed generic-level classification of 14 species 

 of Bairdiidae with the species-groups recognized by Miiller (1894) and 

 Kornicker (1961) 



