Neotanais Beddard, 1886

Bamber, Roger N., 2007, Suborders Apseudomorpha Sieg, 1980 and Neotanaidomorpha Sieg, 1980 *, Zootaxa 1599, pp. 13-40 : 30

Genus Neotanais Beddard, 1886

The genus Neotanais is confined to deep waters, and generally conservative in morphology. The sex-ratio is highly biased towards females; males, commonly larger, show sexual dimorphism in the proportions of the cephalon and the shape of the cheliped. The main features which have been used to distinguish species are the proportions of the cephalon, pereonites and pleotelson, the conformation of the ventral keel of the pleon, the number of dorsal carpal setae on the cheliped, the relative lengths of the fingers of the chela, the proportions of the proximal article and relative lengths of the distal articles of the antennule, the relative length of the uropod exopod, the proximal setation of the pleopod, and the adult size. Mouthparts are generally regarded to have no taxonomic significance (and are unknown for many species). Similarly, the pereopods are generally uniform, differing at the specific level in the details of setation.

Larsen (1999) produced a practical identification key to the females of the species then known, since when Larsen and Błaźewicz-Paszkowycz (2003) and Larsen and Hansknecht (2003) have described a further four species, bringing the total described before this study to thirty-six species.