EXTENSION OF RANGE OF NOTOPOIDES LATUS HENDERSON, 1888 (BRACHYURA: RANINIDAE) TO THE EASTERN SOUTH PACIFIC, WITH A CORRECTION TO ITS ORIGINAL FIGURED SHAPE

Abstract

Abstract Notopoides latus is recorded from Ducie Island at the extreme eastern end of the Tuamotu-Mangareva-Pitcairn chain of island groups in the eastern South Pacific. Hence, N. latus is now known to be an Indo-Pacific species ranging from East Africa and the western Indian Ocean, through Indonesia and the Philippines to the Northwest and Central Pacific, to eastern Australia, Norfolk Island, and across to the eastern South Pacific. Henderson's original 1888 figure shows N. latus, in dorsal view, with an urn-shaped carapace rather than the symmetrically-ovate carapace seen in all modern figures. This puzzling anomaly has been resolved by examination of Henderson's type series, and other available material, showing that Henderson's artist had drawn his specimen with the carapace tilted backwards rather than in the conventional horizontal position. Henderson's figured male specimen in The Natural History Museum, London, is designated the lectotype.