Ammothella stauromata Child, 1982

Arango, Claudia P., 2003, Sea spiders (Pycnogonida, Arthropoda) from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia: new species, new records and ecological annotations, Journal of Natural History 37 (22), pp. 2723-2772 : 2730-2731

Ammothella stauromata Child, 1982

Ammothella stauromata Child, 1982b: 271–271 , figure 1; 1988b: 5–7; 1990: 316; 1996b: 544; Nakamura and Child, 1988: 809–810; Müller, 1990: 66; Stock, 1994: 29.

Material examined. Green Island, on reef flat, shallow seagrass beds and algae,

23 October 1999, one juvenile. Turtle Bay , 4 May 2000, one juvenile.

Description. These juveniles coincide fairly well with the description of A. stauromata , although both specimens are damaged and some characters cannot be recognized; they also lack the ovigers. The chelifores in juveniles correspond to those illustrated by Child (1982b).

Distribution. Three specimens of A. stauromata are known from Lizard Island (Child, 1990). This is the second record of the species for Australia from a nearby location in the GBR. This species has a wide distribution through the western Pacific islands, it has been reported from Papua New Guinea to the Marshall Islands, Philippines, Society Islands, Fiji Islands, and in the Indian Ocean it was collected in Kenya.

Remarks. A related species found in Australia is Ammothella theitidis Clark, 1963 , resembling A. stauromata in the presence of dorsal tubercles, but only the latter has a medium dorsal tubercle on the cephalic segment; the chelifores are more slender and longer and the proboscis more globular-shaped in A. theitidis .