PROC. BIOL. SOC. WASH. 107(1), 1994, pp. 151-163 PSEUDOCYCLOPS LAKSHMI, A NEW SPECIES (PSEUDOCYCLOPIDAE: CALANOIDA: COPEPODA) FROM THE LACCADIVES, INDIA P. Haridas, M. Madhupratap, and S. Ohtsuka Abstract. —Pseudocydops lakshmi, new species, is described from the Kadmat and Agatti atolls of the Laccadives, India, along with its dimorphic males. Characters separating the new species from the rest of its congeners are dis-cussed. This species is epibenthic and emerges in large numbers into the water column at night. The hyperbenthic calanoid copepod ge-nus Pseudocydops Giesbrecht, 1 893 at pres-ent consists of 29 species described from shallow waters of the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions (Brady 1872; Brady & Rob-ertson 1873; Giesbrecht 1893; Sars 1903, 1919; Esterly 1911; Gumey 1927; Sewell 1932; NichoUs 1944a, 1944b; Noodt 1958 Bowman & Gonzalez 1961; Vervoort 1 964 Tanaka 1966; Wells 1967; Fosshagen 1968 Por 1968; Dawson 1977; Andronov 1986 Othman & Greenwood 1989; Barr & Ohtsu-ka 1989). Nine species of the genus have hitherto been recorded/described from the Indian Ocean including the Red Sea and Suez Canal, viz. P. obtusatus Brady & Rob-ertson, 1873 from the Arabian Sea and Sri Lanka (Thompson & Scott 1903); P. um-bricatus Giesbrecht, 1893 and P. latens Gurney, 1927 from the Suez Canal; P. la-tisetosus Sewell, 1932, and P. simplex Sew-ell, 1932 (type localities of these two species are not given in Sewell 1932); P. reductus Nicholls, 1944b, P. gohariNoodt, 1958 and P. steinitzi Por, 1968 from the Red Sea, and P. xiphophorus Wells, 1967 from Mozam-bique. Their occurrences so far are known only from type localities except P. obtusatus which is recorded broadly from the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean (see Thompson & Scott 1903, Rose 1933, Vervoort 1964, Othman & Greenwood 1989). Pseudocydops obtu-satus from the Indian Ocean was reported but not illustrated by Thompson & Scott (1903); there remains the possibility that not all of its records are correct. Similarly, P. australis Nicholls, 1944a, originally de-scribed from South Australia has been re-corded from South Japan (Tanaka 1966) al-beit with differences in the structure of exopods of antenna and mandibular palp. During investigations on zooplankton of the atolls of the Laccadive Sea (Madhupra-tap et al. 1991a, 1991b), an undescribed species of Pseudocydops was found to be a dominant calanoid copepod in the night-time net tows in the shallow lagoons of Kad-mat and Agatti atolls. Although Pseudocy-dops species are usually distributed near or on the seabottom, they are often found in the water column due to their vertical mi-gration (e.g., Esterly 1911, Gumey 1927, Vervoort 1964, Fosshagen 1968, Dawson 1977, Othman & Greenwood 1989, Oht-suka unpublished data). The present paper describes both sexes of the new species of Pseudocydops including the apparently di-morphic males. Pseudocydops lakshmi, new species Figs. 1-7 Marer/a/.— Specimens were collected in surface hauls at night using a square net (mesh width 200 /um) from Agatti on 10-
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