Vibilia peronii Milne­Edwards

Zeidler, Wolfgang, 2003, A review of the hyperiidean amphipod superfamily Vibilioidea Bowman and Gruner, 1973 (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Hyperiidea), Zootaxa 280 (1), pp. 1-104 : 73

Vibilia peronii Milne­Edwards

Vibilia peronii Milne­Edwards, 1830: 386­387 . — Lamarck 1838: 308. Milne­Edwards 1840: 73, pl. 30, fig. 1. Bate 1862: 303. Bovallius 1887c: 45–47, text fig.. Behning 1913b: 212.

Type material

Type material could not be located at the MNHN or ANSP and is presumed lost. No type locality is given by Milne­Edwards (1830) but Milne­Edwards (1840) gives “Seas of Asia” as the locality for his species.

Remarks

The descriptions of Milne­Edwards (1830, 1840) and figures (1840) are insufficient to characterise this species. The specimen figured by Milne­Edwards (1840) appears to be a male, judging by the length of the second antennae. The posterior lateral corners of the last urosomite are not projected thus, it is not V. armata , V. pyripes , V. cultripes , V. chuni , V. longicarpus or V. laticaudata . Of the remainder, it is obviously not V. australis or V. caeca , and probably not V. antarctica , which does not occur in the Asian region. If one can trust the figures of Milne­Edwards (1840) then, apart from other minor characters, it does not seem to be V. stebbingi or V. thurstoni as it is too large (4 lignes = 9.2 mm), or V. robusta as uropod 2 is too short, or V. viatrix because pereopods 3 and 4 are too long and have a short dactylus, or V. propinqua or V. gibbosa which have a much shorter carpal process on gnathopod 2. That leaves only V. jeangerardi and V. borealis neither of which have gnathopod 2 with a carpal process as long as that illustrated by Milne­Edwards and, perhaps apart from V. borealis , have not been recorded from ‘Asian Seas’. It is therefore impossible to assign Milne­Edwards’s species to any known species of Vibilia .