A New Species of Podocerus (Amphipoda : Podoceridae) from the Carapace of a Loggerhead Sea Turtle in Japan

Abstract

A new species of podocerid amphipod, Podocerus umigame, has been collected from the carapace of a loggerhead sea turtle, Caretta caretta, at Shirahama, Wakayama, Japan. This new species is very similar to P. cheloniae (Stebbing, 1888) and P. chelonophilus (Chevreux and Guerne, 1888), which have been collected from sea turtles in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, but it is distinguishable by the ornamentation of the telson, the spination of the inner ramus of uropods 1 and 2, and the form of a tooth on male gnathopod 2.