NO. 3652 ISOPODA AND TANAIDACEA—MILLER 29 
from the synonymy of L. dubia to that of L. savignyi (Krgyer) and 
incorporating their recorded localities in the list for the latter. It is 
pertinent to the later discussion to note that Richardson (1901, 
1905b) regards L. dubia and L. savignyi as distinct species although 
the only recognizable difference is in the number of articles in the 
inner branch of the uropoda, the former having five joints, the latter 
Six. 
Monod (1933) regards L. lifuensis Stebbing as a junior synonym 
and concludes that LZ. dubia is a tropical and subtropical cosmopolite. 
Larwood (1940), however, goes further by adding L. savignyi, L. 
algicola, and L. neopolitana to the synonymy of L. dubia. Accordingly, 
he gives a much more extended distribution for the latter as follows: 
East coast of North America; North-East Atlantic from Brittany and the Channel 
Islands as far south as Senegal and Madeira and the Azores; Mediterranean: 
Gulf of Naples, Spezia, Messina, Marseilles, Syracuse, coast of Algeria; Adriatic: 
Gulf of Trieste; West Indies; Brazil; Indo-Pacific: Loyalty Islands, Isle of Pines, 
Ceylon and the Red Sea. 
Additional recorded localities for L. dubia are: Black Sea (Bacescu, 
1938), Hawaiian Islands (Miller, 1940), Japan (Shiino, 1951), British 
Columbia (Fee, 1926), Washington (Hatch, 1947). 
Brown (1957), following Barnard (1925b), also considered several 
species of Leptochelia identical, namely, L. savignyi, L. dubia, L. 
edwardsi, and L. lifuensis. Priority is in the order named since the 
first three were described by Krgyer in 1842 on pages 168, 178, and 
191, respectively, and the last was named by Stebbing in 1900. Thus, 
Barnard and Brown rightly deem L. savignyi to be the correct name 
and assign L. dubia and the others to its synonymy. As mentioned 
above, Larwood also regarded L. dubia and L. savignyi (among 
others) as conspecific but erroneously reversed the priority, relegating 
the latter to the synonymy of the former. In any event, all three 
authors indicate that the characters on which specific distinctions 
have been made, particularly the number of joints in the inner branch 
of the uropod, are too variable to have taxonomic significance. 
The present author prefers to suspend judgment on the synonymy 
of several species of Leptochelia, particularly as to whether or not 
L. dubia and L. savignyi are conspecific, until more conclusive evidence 
is available. Certainly indicated is a critical comparison of the species 
in question based on adequate samples (including individuals of 
different size and sex) from representative localities. The fact that the 
forms named L. dubia generally have been reported from warmer 
waters than those named L. savignyi supports Monod’s opinion that 
the former is a tropical-subtropical cosmopolite. Theoretically, such 
ecological segregation of these benthic forms with no apparent means of 
active dispersal could have resulted in their specific divergence. 
