110 
Charles K. Biernbaum 
specimens found under a crate in a garage 80 km from the coast at 1311 
m in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Good figures of this species are in Burt (1934) 
and Shoemaker (1936, as Talitrus sylvaticus Haswell). The first published 
occurrence of T. topitotum in the United States was that by Shoemaker 
(1936, as Talitrus sylvaticus ) in California gardens, where it on occasion 
reached pest densities. If T. topitotum, T. pacificus Hurley and T. 
decoratus (Carl) are synonymous (Hurley 1975), T. topitotum has wild 
populations in India, Australia, many Indo-Pacific islands, Brazil, the 
Azores, Madeira (Hurley 1975) and, in the United States, California 
(Shoemaker 1936), Florida, the Gulf Coast (Bousfield, unpubl.) and 
Hawaii, where it has become the dominant amphipod species in leaf litter 
(Bousfield and Howarth 1976). 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.— I wish to thank Dr. E. L. Bousfield for 
providing additional distributional information and for confirming 
species identifications. Two anonymous reviewers provided criticisms 
which greatly improved the publication. 
LITERATURE CITED 
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adaptations in Crustacea. Am. Zool. 5(4):393-398. 
1975. List of Talitridae. pp. 363-364 in Smith, R.I., and J. T. 
Carlton (eds.). Light’s manual: Intertidal invertebrates of the Central 
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new species from Ceylon, Talitrus (Talitropsis) topitotum, sub-gen. et sp. 
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