Anoplodactylus longiceps Stock, 1951

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 : 2752

Anoplodactylus longiceps Stock, 1951

Anoplodactylus longicollis Williams, 1941: 36–38 , figures 2–5 (preoccupied).

Anoplodactylus longiceps: Stock, 1951: 16 ; 1954: 83; 1956: 97–98, figure 14c, d; Child, 1975: 20, figure 9f; 1990: 331.

Material examined. Turtle Bay, intertidal C. prolifera , 14 May 1999, two X, two W; 12 July 1999, two W, one X.

Description. Trunk 1.56 mm long, 0.23 mm wide, segmented by fine lines, elongate body, crurigers separated by more than half their diameter, smooth body; ocular tubercle tall, tip very acute, eyes not well pigmented; abdomen erect, slightly swollen distally; proboscis cylindrical, with constriction in the distal half. Chelifores long, touching at the base then widely separated, palm and chela half the size of the scape, few short setae and spinules distally in scape and palm. Ovigers four-segmented in the young males collected. Legs smooth except for a long tubercle distally in femur, propodus long, with heel, one large heel spine and two or three smaller ones, six sole spines, main claw long and well curved.

Distribution. This species is found in both eastern and western Australia, Kei Islands in Indonesia and other western Pacific islands. It was described from Lindeman Island in the GBR and Child (1990) reported it from Lizard Island. These intertidal specimens are the shallowest record (known from 2 to 12 m).

Remarks. Anoplodactylus longiceps might be related to A. simplex Clark, 1963 (synonymized with A. cribellatus Calman, 1923 , see Bamber, 1997a), but the crurigers in A. longiceps are more widely separated, the distal tubercle in the femora are more prominent and the genital spurs of the males of A. longiceps are larger and pointed. In males, the number of cement glands differs from two in A. longiceps to 10 or more in the cribellatus complex (Bamber, 1997b). These specimens coincide with the green coloration mentioned by Child (1998a). Two specimens of A. longiceps were observed feeding upon the dorid nudibranch Okenia sp. also found in the Cladophora tufts (Arango and Brodie, in press).