ZooKeys 491: 1–62 (2015)

Joeropsididae Nordenstam, 1933 (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota)...

doi: 10.3897/zookeys.491.4932

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Joeropsididae Nordenstam, 1933 (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota) from the Lizard Island region of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia Niel L. Bruce1,2,3 1 Museum of Tropical Queensland, Queensland Museum, 70–102 Flinders Street, Townsville, Australia 4810 2 Water Research Group (Ecology), Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North West University, Potchefstroom, 2520, 2006 South Africa 3 College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia Corresponding author: Niel L. Bruce ([email protected]) Academic editor: Saskia Brix  |  Received 1 March 2013  |  Accepted 20 February 2015  |  Published 26 March 2015 http://zoobank.org/58DFD146-00AE-4B6E-BE23-DF258375273C Citation: Bruce NL (2015) Joeropsididae Nordenstam, 1933 (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota) from the Lizard Island region

of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. ZooKeys 491: 1–62. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.491.4932

Abstract The marine isopod family Joeropsididae (Asellota) is documented for the Lizard Island region of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Fifteen species of Joeropsis are recorded, including ten new species; descriptive notes are provided for five species that lacked adequate material for description. A revised family and genus diagnosis is presented together with comments on the most useful characters for species identification and a key to Joeropsis of the Lizard Island region. Keywords Isopoda, Asellota, Joeropsis, coral reef, Australia, southwestern Pacific, taxonomy

Introduction The family Joeropsididae Nordenstam, 1933 and the genus Joeropsis Koehler, 1885 both have a global distribution, being absent only from polar waters (Schotte et al. 2011). Joeropsis is well represented in tropical regions worldwide, with more than 58% (53 of 86, including undescribed Australian species) of the known species from shallow (< 50 metres) coastal waters and coral reefs. Of the known species, only seven have Copyright Niel L. Bruce. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Niel L. Bruce / ZooKeys 491: 1–62 (2015)

been reported from depths greater than 300 metres, with Joeropsis antarctica Menzies & Schultz, 1968 recorded from 1,408 metres off the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Joeropsis appears to be ubiquitous in coral-reef habitats with previous records indicating diversity in the order of two to six species in any region or locality. For example six species are known from coral reefs of the Seychelles and its territories (Kensley and Schotte 2002), two species from the Mascarene Islands (Müller 1991a), three species from the Society Islands (Müller 1989) and four species from Easter Island (Kensley 2003). The collecting methods used by those workers did not involve SCUBA so were restricted to the intertidal or very shallow (

Joeropsididae Nordenstam, 1933 (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota) from the Lizard Island region of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia.

The marine isopod family Joeropsididae (Asellota) is documented for the Lizard Island region of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Fifteen species of ...
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