Foreword 



For many years the Zoological Institute, Academy of Sciences, USSR has 

 been publishing a series of keys to the fauna of the USSR. A substantial 

 part of the series comprises keys to the world fauna, primarily designed to 

 cater to the needs of researchers engaged in various branches of fishery. 



Our fishing fleet and numerous exploration and research vessels are 

 operating in the entire water body of the World Ocean. Hence the need 

 arises to prepare keys covering the entire world fauna. This is an excep- 

 tionally complicated job. However, the results of numerous Soviet expe- 

 ditions conducted in recent decades have contributed such abundant and 

 diverse data from all oceans that this task appears, in principle, pos- 

 sible. This pertains, first of all, to comparatively small and compact 

 groups such as priapulids, nemertines, chaetognaths, euphausiids, hyper- 

 iid amphipods, and some others. 



The present work was undertaken by researchers of the Institute of 

 Oceanography, Academy of Sciences, USSR, and the Pacific Scientific 

 Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (TINRO). It is one of 

 the first attempts in Soviet literature to compile a key to the world fauna 

 of this group. While compiling the key we made use of the extensive 

 collections from such vessels as the "Vityaz," "Ob'," "Akademik Kur- 

 chatov," and vessels of TINRO, and many collections from the Pacific, 

 Indian, Atlantic, and Southern oceans, as well as from the Central Polar 

 Basin and published data. Our collection contains nearly 85% of the 

 species of the world hyperiid fauna, which encouraged us to undertake 

 compilation of the present key. We do not pretend to provide original 

 illustrations and redescriptions of all the species, but have essentially 

 verified in detail the descriptions and illustrations of other authors who 

 had no specimens. The absence of a particular species in our collections 

 is always mentioned in the text. 



This key includes descriptions of 233 species representing 72 genera 

 and 23 families. Of these, 3 genera, 22 species, and 4 subspecies have 

 been established as new and described by the authors (one genus and 

 three species are described for the first time in the present work). 



Most of the keys are original. Many of them, especially for genera 

 which include a large number of species, were repeatedly verified from a 

 large number of specimens and necessary corrections were incorporated 

 in them. 



