Foto: Håvard Kallestad
MIWA Amphipoda
P.I.: Anne Helene Solberg Tandberg
Dept. of Natural History, University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen
The Amphipoda is a large group of mainly small crustaceans that worldwide includes around 10 000 species,of which almost 90% are marine.
They are cosmopolite, and can be found at all depths and in all marine habitats. The amphipod-fauna off West Africa is fairly unknown, especially when compared with other regions. The last systematic examinations published are from the 1970s, where Griffiths (1974) covered the western coast from the Cape and up to 20°S and Kensley (1971) covered southern Angola. Before that Shcellenberg (1925, 1953) had written summaries of the west-African fauna. Most of these publications had a majority of their species-list presenting species new to science.
Sorting the collected material of Amphipods revealed a staggering 43 families represented, compared with the 25 families presented in Griffiths (1974). We plan to look more detailed at some families, starting with the Phoxocephalidae, and possibly the Stenothoidae.
References:
Griffiths, C. 1947. The amphipoda of southern Africa. Part 2. The
Gammaridae and Caprellidae of South West Africa south of 20°S. Annals of
the South African Museum 62(6), 169-208.
Kensley, B. 1971. Amphipoda from Southern Angola. Annals of the South
African Museum 57(8), 149-156.
Schellenberg, A. 1925. Crustacea VIII: Amphipoda. Beiträge zur Kenntnis
der Meeresfaunas Westafrikas III (4), 113-204.
Schellenberg, A. 1953. Ergänzungen zur Amphipodenfauna südwest-Afrikas
nebst Bermerkungen über Brutambildung. Mitteilungen aus dem Zoologischen
Museum in Berlin 29, 107-126.
Blog posts regarding the Crustaceans: