Taxonomy of the two nominal species of the deep-sea clawed lobsters Nephropsis serrata Macpherson, 1993 and N. hamadai Watabe & Ikeda, 1994 (Decapoda: Astacidea: Nephropidae)

Abstract

The deep-sea clawed lobster Nephropsis hamadai, described from Japan, has been suspected to be a synonym of Nephropsis serrata, recorded from Australia (type locality) to Taiwan. The availability of recently collected material from Japan referred to N. hamadai allowed detailed morphological and molecular comparisons of topotypic specimens of N. serrata and N. hamadai. Re-examination of the holotype of N. serrata revealed that the major difference proposed for separating N. hamadai from N. serrata was based on an error in the original description of the latter species. As there are very low genetic divergences and no morphological differences between the Australian and Japanese materials referable to N. serrata and N. hamadai, these two names are now confirmed to be synonyms.