Proceedings of 
the United States 
National Museum 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION + WASHINGTON, D.C. 
Volume 113 1961 Number 3452 
FOUR NEW SPECIES OF PSEUDOCYCLOPS 
(COPEPODA: CALANOIDA) 
FROM PUERTO RICO 
By Tuomas E. Bowman Aanp JuAN G. GONZALEZ! 
The vast majority of marine calanoid copepods are planktonic in 
habit, but a few, referred to as benthic or bottom-living forms, have 
been collected almost exclusively on or near the bottom. Although 
these forms are contained in several not closely related families, they 
have in common small size, plump body, short antenna 1, and strong 
outer spines on the exopods of the swimming legs. 
The bottom-living genus Pseudocyclops, the sole genus in the family 
Pseudocyclopidae, contains 9 species and 1 subspecies. Since Pseudo- 
cyclops is rarely taken by the usual collecting methods, it is probable 
that the vast majority of the species of this genus are as yet unde- 
scribed. The fact that we have collected 4 new species from a single 
locality, doubling the number of known Atlantic species, lends support 
to this belief. These 4 species we describe below, following our diag- 
nosis of Pseudocyclops and our observations on the behavior and the 
ecological niche of its members. 
The detection of a very few specimens of Pseudocyclops in plankton 
tows led to a search for its habitat. Most of the specimens had been 
collected in the Canal de Magiieyes, the shallow channel between 
1The former is associated with the U.S. National Museum, the latter with the Institute of Marine Bi- 
ology, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagiiez. 
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