Lysmata aff. olavoi Fransen, 1991

Olthof, Gabriël, Becking, Leontine E. & Fransen, Charles H. J. M., 2018, On a collection of deep-water shrimp (Crustacea, Decapoda) from the Dutch Caribbean, with the description of a new species of Pseudocoutierea, Zootaxa 4415 (3), pp. 533-548 : 536

Lysmata aff. olavoi Fransen, 1991

Lysmata olavoi Fransen, 1991: 63 , figs. 1–34 [type locality: Azores , Pico, Ponto da Ilha, 38°25’00”N 27°59’10”W, 135m]; González Pérez 1995: 84; Koukouras et al. 1996: 50–51; Koukouras & Dounas 2000: 489; Quiles et al. 2001: 10; Baeza 2010: 257–262; Gan & Li 2016: 186–187.

Material examined. RMNH. CRUS.D.57266: 1 male (pocl. 4.5mm), Bonaire, 12°04'47"N, 068°17'37"W, depth 217m, 1.vi.2013, dive with Curasub submersible BON4 , collected by L.E. Becking and H.W.G. Meesters.

Distribution. Lysmata olavoi was originally described from the Azores and Salvage Islands from depths between 126 and 360 meters (Fransen 1991). The species has subsequently been recorded from the Canary Islands at 250 meters depth (González Pérez 1995; Quiles et al. 2001), and the Aegean Sea in the Mediterranean, from a depth of 70 meters (Koukouras et al. 1996; Koukouras & Dounas 2000). The specimens Baeza (2010) used for his phylogenetic reconstructions were caught at the Azores. The current specimen from the West Atlantic would fall considerably outside of that geographical range.

Remarks. The current specimen resembles Lysmata olavoi Fransen, 1991 in having three ventral rostral teeth, a pterygostomial tooth, a rudimentary accessory branch and the pleura of the 4th and 5th pleonal segment posteriorly acute. However there are some significant differences between the present specimen and the description by Fransen (1991): 1) it possesses two postorbital rostral teeth instead of three, 2) it has a smaller number of segmentations on the carpus and merus of the second pereiopod: 22 carpal segments and 15 meral segments on the left side, and 24 carpal segments and 14 meral segments on the right side, 3) it has only 2 movable and 2 fixed spines on the flexor margin of the dactylus of the 3rd to 5th pereiopods while 4 moveable spines have been described for this species. These characters showed only minor variation in the description of Fransen (1991) and did not seem correlated with specimen size. However the current specimen would be the smallest specimen found thus far, with only one of the specimens of Koukouras & Dounas (2000) close in size (pocl. 4.7mm), so specimen size could still be a factor in explaining the mentioned differences.