Vibilia peronii Milne-Edwards

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.