Family EURYTHENEIDAE Stoddart & Lowry, 2004

Eurythenes thurstoni

© Copyright from Stoddart & Lowry, 2004: fig. 16

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Introduction

Eurytheneids are a small monotypic family of deep sea lysianassoids with a world-wide distribution. Only three species are known in the genus Eurythenes and all occur in Australian waters. Two of the species (E. gryllus (Lichtenstein in Mandt, 1822) and E. thurstoni Stoddart & Lowry, 2004) are well-documented scavengers (Stoddart & Lowry 2004) occurring pelagically and demersally in the oceanic realm. The third species, E. obesus (Chevreux, 1905) is a pelagic species usually taken in mid-water trawls. Very little is known about its biology. According to Stoddart & Lowry (2004), E. obesus has once been recorded as burrowing into a salp (Stephensen 1915), once as having coelenterate remains in the stomach (Hopkins 1985), once with possibly siliceous sponge spicules in the stomach (Brusca 1967), and once as attacking fish taken in mid-water trawls (Thurston & Bett 1995).

General References

Stoddart H. E. & Lowry J. K. 2004. The deep-sea lysianassoid genus Eurythenes (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Eurytheneidae n. fam.). Zoosystematica Rossica 26(3): 451-460

Thurston, M.H. & Bett, B.J. 1995. Hatchling Size and Aspects of Biology in the Deep-Sea Amphipod Genus Eurythenes (Crustacea: Amphipoda). lnternational Revue ges. Hydrobiology 80 (2): 201-216

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