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Records of the Australian Museum (2017) Vol. 69 
Violetta Iredale, 1929: 279. Type species (by original 
designation): Janthina globosa Swainson, 1822; 
Pliocene-Recent, cosmopolitan. 
Parajanthina Tomida & Itoigawa, 1982:60. Type species (by 
original designation): Parajanthina japonica Tomida & 
Itoigawa, 1982 (= Hartungia dennanti chavani Ludbrook, 
1978); late Pliocene-early Pleistocene, cosmopolitan. 
Kaneconcha Kaim, Tucholke & Waren, 2012: 427. Type 
species (by original designation): Kaneconcha knorri 
Kaim, Tucholke & Waren, 2012 (= Hartungia dennanti 
chavani Ludbrook, 1978). 
Remarks. The name lodes was first introduced as a nomen 
nudum by Gray (ex Leach ms) (1847a: 269) (Oct) and Gray 
(1847b: 148) (Nov) in the synonymy of Janthina. Its original 
rank was a subgenus of Janthina ; the name was attributed 
by Morch (1860) and Tryon (1887) to Leach. The name 
Janthina britannica was first introduced in synonymy (of 
Janthina communis Lamarck, 1822, i.e., J. janthina ), but 
was made available under ICZN Art. 11.6.1 by its use as a 
valid name, e.g., by Morch (1860: 273). Tryon (1887: 34) 
included the single species ‘ Janthina britannica Leach” in 
“lodes (Leach) Gray, 1847”, but it is not clear that this was 
intended to be a type species designation, as he stated that 
“The following sections of Morch have very slight value”, and 
that he was merely assigning a single species to each section. 
Nevertheless, it is the one published type species designation 
the writer is aware of. The same type species question applies 
also to Iodina Morch, 1860 and Amethistina Morch, 1860. 
Cossmann (1925:158) also designated Janthina exigua as the 
type species of Iodina , and on the same page also designated 
J. pallida as the type species of “ Amethistina Schinz 1825 
(fide Moerch, I860)” and so is taken here to have designated 
J. pallida as the type species of Amethistina Morch, 1860. 
Bronn (1861) compared his species Hartungia typica with 
Janthina species, and although he did not use a family-group 
heading, he expressly included it in Janthinidae. The Atlantic 
fossil species revised here were also referred to Janthina 
by Mayer (1864a, b). Finlay (1931) was the first to realize 
that Turbo postulatus Bartrum, 1919 belongs in Heligmope 
Tate, 1893 and that Heligmope is a genus of Janthinidae. 
Recognition that Hartungia Bronn, 1861 is an earlier name 
for Heligmope Tate, 1893 and that Hartungia belongs in the 
Janthinidae must be credited to Chavan (1951). The writer 
was informed by C. A. Fleming that Chavan’s (1951) brief 
paper inspired Fleming’s (1953a) research. Chavan (1951) 
regarded Hartungia as a subgenus of Acrybia H. Adams 
& A. Adams, 1853. Chavan thought Acrybia was the valid 
synonym of Bulbus Brown, 1839, because the name Bulbus 
had been used earlier by Humphrey (1797). Cossmann 
(1925: 159) had come to the same conclusion and ranked 
Heligmope Tate, 1893 as a subgenus of Acrybia , so Chavan 
(1951) was following Cossmann’s classification, although 
Cossmann (1925) did not mention the name Hartungia. 
However, Humphrey’s (1797) work is non-binominal and 
all names introduced in it are unavailable (ICZN Opinion 
51,1912), which leaves Bulbus Brown, 1839 as an available 
name. Bulbus is a genus of Naticidae, mainly distributed 
in the boreal region. Dell (1990: 153) discussed the genus 
Bulbus , treated Acrybia as a junior synonym, and recorded 
three Antarctic species. Fleming’s (1953a) brief list of species 
related to Hartungia typica and suggestion that they provided 
a novel means of Pliocene correlation provided the initial 
impetus for the present work. 
A significant difficulty with Laursen’s (1953) otherwise 
excellent monograph of Janthina is his failure to identify type 
specimens. Laursen illustrated Linnaeus’s (1758) syntypes 
of Helix janthina in Uppsala, Sweden, and in the Linnean 
Society’s collection in London, but although he recognized 
that two species are represented he did not designate an 
unequivocal lectotype. Laursen also did not mention any 
type material of any other species names. Therefore, a 
major emphasis of the present work has been to stabilize the 
nomenclature by identifying all possible available names with 
particular species by finding or designating type specimens, 
particularly for the early-proposed names that could be 
referred to any of several species. Twenty two neotypes and 
six lectotypes are proposed in this report to identify names 
unambiguously, to avoid future confusion about which 
names apply to which species. An Appendix (p. 208) lists 
the new type designations in the present work. As all revised 
species are at present or are assumed to have been formerly 
cosmopolitan neustonic species in temperate and tropical 
seas, the usual requirement that neotypes should come from 
as near as possible to the original type locality is considered 
to be unimportant in this case. Also, some type specimens 
have debated localities (e.g., Recluzia rollandiana Petit de 
la Saussaye, 1853—from western Mexico or from New 
Caledonia?). Designating a suitable neotype of the appropriate 
species was deemed more critical than matching the original 
type locality for cosmopolitan Janthina and Recluzia species. 
The teleoconch of Janthina is characterized by its violet 
colour, its more-or-less equidimensional heliciform shape, 
its fine axial teleoconch sculpture (present in only some of 
the living species, but in ah extinct species) resembling that 
of finely sculptured Epitonium species, and its sinus in the 
outer lip. Differences between Janthina, Recluzia and benthic 
Epitoniidae are listed in Table 1. In the fossil species J. typica, 
J. krejcii and J. chavani the sinus is small and located at the 
base of the outer lip, semicircular in most specimens, although 
a little wider in some specimens of J. chavani. It generates 
a spiral fold parallel to the inner lip, wider than the other 
spiral folds on the rest of the surface. In contrast, in most 
living species the sinus is V-shaped and occupies the entire 
width of the outer lip, with its apex at the centre of the lip, 
and does not generate any swelling of the shell surface. The 
sinus is shallow in Janthina janthina and more obvious in the 
basal limb of the lip than adapically, and is very shallow in J. 
pallida , but it is deeper, wider and more prominent in the other 
living species, particularly in J. exigua and J. umbilicata. 
Photographs of living specimens (Figs 4B-C, 5A, E) reveal 
that the (main?) function of the sinus is to accommodate 
the head and snout as they protrude permanently from the 
shell. In a species that cannot retract its head at any time, as 
it must protrude (with the mesopodium) to retain the bubble 
float, the sinus accommodates the protruding head. However, 
the much narrower and more basal lip sinus of the extinct 
species J. typica , J. krejcii and J. chavani suggests that the 
sinus originally had a different function, possibly to allow 
the extrusion of egg capsules. The axial sculpture and the 
closely similar protoconch are characters in common with 
benthic Epitoniidae. Janthina essentially contains short, wide, 
violet, neustonic species of Epitonium that have undergone 
mutations of the pedal mucus gland and propodium enabling 
them to form mucus bubbles, attach them to each other to 
form a float, lay relatively large egg capsules attached to the 
float rather than chalazae-linked small capsules, and all the 
