The deep-sea commercial caridean shrimp, Heterocarpus woodmasoni (Crustacea: Decapoda: Panalidae), with description of a new species from the western Pacific Ocean

Abstract

The availability of fresh specimens of the commercial, deep-sea pandalid shrimp, Heterocarpus woodmasoni Alcock, 1901, from India revealed that material referred to this species from India and the western Pacific Ocean have distinct differences in coloration, morphology, and genetic divergence. Although the syntypes of H. woodmasoni cannot be located now, a color photograph of a typotypic specimen from the Andaman Sea allowed the determination of the Indian form as the true H. woodmasoni. To stabilize the taxonomy in the "H. woodmasoni" species group, a neotype is selected for H. woodmasoni from an Indian specimen with both coloration and molecular barcoding information. The western Pacific form is described as a new species, Heterocarpus fascirostratus sp. nov., which differs from H. woodmasoni in having a banded rostrum, eggs reddish brown instead of greenish brown, lacking rostral crest, armed usually with fewer dorsolateral spines on the telson, the overhanging spine on the abdominal somite III not markedly recurved downwards, and a rather straight postantennal carina.