Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
In his recent monograph on British Marine Amphipoda, Lincoln (1979) reported that three species of Leucothoe Leach had been recorded from the British Isles previous to his work and added a fourth species, L. richiardii Lessona. This fourth species he added after examining material collected in 1935, from the Eddystone grounds, by G. I. Crawford. The species had previously been recorded from the same area (Marine Biological Association, 1957) as ‘Leucothoe sp. nov. (allied to L. richiardii Lessona)’.
We have recently had the opportunity to examine more material of the above species from Ireland, together with Crawford's original material kindly loaned to us by Dr Lincoln. Females of this species closely resemble L. richiardii, and only the presence of males in the Irish material (unavailable to Dr Lincoln prior to the publication of his monograph), which differ significantly from those of L. richiardii, alerted us to the distinctness of this species.
Bate (1857) described a new species of Leucothoe from Banff, Scotland under the name L. procera Bate. His three line description however, is insufficiently precise to determine to which species he was referring. Later (Bate, 1862) he redescribed and figured the species under the name L. furina Savigny, and his description and figures agree well with present material except in the shape of epimeron 3 (quadrate) and the telson which is terminally narrow. Bate & Westwood (1862) again figure and describe the species under the name L. furina and re-emphasize the peculiar telson. The epimera are figured as rounded lobes. Unfortunately, Bate's type material is no longer extant, but there seems little doubt, when one considers the perfect agreement in the structure of the male gnathopod 2 between Bate's figured material and present material, that the two are conspecific.