A Complete Description of Sepia mira (Cotton 1932) (Cephalopoda: Sepiidae) from Eastern Australia Amanda Reid (Communicated by M.L. Augee) 140 Napoleon Street, Eltham, Victoria 3095 Reid, A. (1998). A complete description of Sepia mira (Cotton 1932) (Cephalopoda: Sepiidae) from Eastern Australia. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 119, 155-171. Sepia mira (Cotton 1932) is described on the basis of five specimens trawled between 20-72 m off northern New South Wales. The species was known previously only from cuttle-bones collected from a number of eastern Australian localities. This complete description confirms the status of S. mira as valid. Manuscript received 20 July 1997, accepted for publication 17 September 1997. KEY WORDS: Sepia mira, Sepiidae, doratosepion, description, eastern Australia. INTRODUCTION Sepia mira was described by Cotton (1932) on the basis of a cuttlebone collected on Norfh-West Islet in the Capricorn Group of Islands off Gladstone, Queensland. Since that time, bones have been collected from additional localities in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland, but whole animals had remained elusive. In 1995 and 1996, Ken Graham from NSW Fisheries collected some representatives of this species near the Clarence River mouth in northern New South Wales, enabling the species to be fully described here. The specimens were collected as part of a NSW Fisheries survey of the Newcastle and Clarence River prawn grounds. Other sepiids collected within the range of S. mira were: S. apama Gray 1849; S. limata (Iredale 1926) (see endnote); S. opipara (Iredale 1926); S. plangon Gray 1849 and S. rozella (Iredale 1926), with the latter two species occurring in the greatest abundance (Graham and Wood 1997). Cotton (1932) decided that Sepia mira was sufficiently distinctive to place in a new genus, Tenuisepia. Subsequent workers (with the notable exception of Iredale and McMichael (1962) who placed the species in its own subfamily) have generally conclud-ed that distinct generic status is not justified. Until a complete revision of the sepiids is undertaken, the classification followed here is that proposed in Khromov et al. (in press) which recognises only three genera within the Sepiidae with the present species designat-ed to the genus Sepia. This complete description confirms the status of S. mira as valid. MATERIALS AND METHODS This work was based on museum material. All material studied is listed in the Material Examined section. Institutional acronyms used are: AM — Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia; MV — Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia and SAM — South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia. Other abbreviations: coll. — collected, F — female, FV — Fisheries Vessel, Is. — Island, J — juvenile, m — meters, M — male, mm — millimeters. Proc. Linn. Soc. n.s.w., 119. 1998
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