Chondrodesmus hoffmanni ( Peters, 1865 )

Chondrodesmus hoffmanni ( Peters, 1865) View in CoL

Fig. 1

Polydesmus (Rhacophorus) Hoffmanni (sic!) Peters, 1865: 537 (original description in German).

Dirhabdophallus (?) hoffmanni View in CoL (sic!)— Pocock, 1909: 165 (brief redescription translated into English, uncertain species). Chondrodesmus hoffmanni View in CoL — Attems, 1938: 89 (uncertain species).

Polydesmus (Rhacophorus) hoffmanni — Moritz & Fischer, 1978: 119 ( holotype premises).

Type material examined. Holotype female, dry and pinned, together with its original labels ( ZMB 197 View Materials ), Costa Rica, no precise locality data, Dr. Hoffmann leg. ( Fig. 1, the labels reading “Hoffmanni Peters, Costarica Hoffm. ” and “ Holotypus ”).

Brief descriptive notes. According to the original description ( Peters 1865) and Fig. 1, the female holotype is 52 mm long and 5.7 mm wide. Coloration dark olive-brown with characteristic, large, yellowish spots on paraterga. Ozopores lying mostly dorsolaterally and placed inside very distinct, broad, high and circular peritremata, these being well removed from the obtuse to rectangular, largely narrowly rounded caudal corners of paraterga ( Fig. 1).

Remarks. Using Loomis’ (1972) key to the Chondrodesmus species of Costa Rica and immediately adjacent countries, because of the dorsal location of ozopores alone, our samples would readily key out to C. hoffmanni . Examination of the holotype ( Fig. 1), however, shows C. hoffmanni to actually be distinct from the fresh Costa Rican samples treated below, primarily on account of the shape and position of the poriferous peritremata well removed from the angular and mostly narrowly rounded caudal corners of paraterga, the largely dorsolateral rather than dorsal location of the ozopores, and the increasingly acute (moving posteriorly) caudal corners of the paraterga before the telson.

Instead, similarities of the new samples from Costa Rica are far more profound with Chondrodesmus riparius Carl, 1914 . This species was originally described from three male syntypes coming from Colombia, Bodega Central, Magdalena, 50 m a.s.l. ( Carl 1914), and later recorded as being introduced to Europe and referred to either as C. riparius or as C. cf. riparius . The nomenclatural history of this species is summarized as follows.