Loligo bartramii Lesueur, 1821: 90

Loligo bartramii Lesueur, 1821: 90 , pl. 7.

Type material: Academy of Natural Sciences ( ANSP). Not extant [fide Voss (1962: 1); Lu et al. (1995: 312)].

Neotype: National Museum of Nature and Science , Tokyo, specimen NSMT-Mo 67507, mature male, 270 mm DML, collected by squid jigging at 41.95°N, 135.17°W on 8 September 2009. GoogleMaps

Ty p e l o c a l i t y: N o t d e s i g n a t e d i n t h e o r i g i n a l description. Here it is designated, based on the neotype, as North Pacific waters ( Table 1; Fig. 3) (see ‘Remarks’).

Synonyms

(?) Loligo touchardii Souleyet, 1852: 22 , pl. 2, figs 6–13 [fide Pfeffer (1912: 466)] MNHN Syntype 7-3-724 [fide Lu et al. (1995: 326)]. Locality: Pacific Ocean.

(?) Ommastrephes ensifer Owen, 1881: 144 , pl. 28. Type repository unresolved [ Royal College of Surgeons , London, UK?] . Type locality not designated.

Diagnosis

Ommastrephes with a maximal mantle length of 600 mm and weight of 6 kg; maximal spermatophore length of 21–41 mm (9.5 ± 1.45% DML), cement body of spermatophore 11%, sperm reservoir 44.7% and posterior empty end 22% of spermatophore length; cytochrome c oxidase subunit I diagnostic character: 454, C.

Name of the species in the phylogenetic analyses: Ommastrephes group 4.

Distribution: Temperate North Pacific, from the coasts of China (25°N) to Russia (60°N) in the west, and probably from Alaska (55°N) to the Gulf of California (20°N) in the east. The distribution has been confirmed using molecular tools for the majority of its range, excluding north-eastern Pacific waters ( Fig. 3).

Remarks: Ommastrephes bartramii was described as Loligo bartramii by Lesueur (1821: 90–92, pl. VII) and was later transferred to the genus Ommastrephes by d’Orbigny (1834 –1848). In his description, Lesueur did not provide any specific locality for the species, and the type specimen no longer exists ( Voss, 1962: 1; Lu et al., 1995: 312). The only reference to the origin of the material he examined is that they came ‘from the collection of the academy, and that from the Philadelphia Museum’ ( Lesueur, 1821: 89). Without any further accurate reference, it is possible that the material came from the Philadelphia shores and adjacent waters. However, Lesueur also participated in the Baudin Expedition (1800–1803; see Péron & Freycinet, 1816) from Le Havre ( France) to Australia, and he might have collected specimens during this cruise, covering the distribution area of Ommastrephes groups 1, 2 and 3. Based on the available information, it is not possible to exclude any other specimens that were previously donated to the Philadelphia Museum from other localities. Therefore, the type locality data of the O. bartramii type material remains unresolved and uncertain.

Although the type locality remains uncertain, the name ‘ Ommastrephes bartramii ’ has been widely used in the North Pacific, where the only commercial fishery for this squid occurs and where the majority of studies on this genus have been conducted. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN) precludes the substitution of a long-accepted name in its accustomed meaning in order to increase taxonomic stability ( ICZN Article 32.2; International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 1999). The name O. bartramii referring to North Pacific individuals (i.e. Ommastrephes group 4) has been used in> 25 works authored by more than ten researchers in the last 50 years (e.g. Young & Hirota, 1990; Sakurai et al., 1995; Ichii et al., 2009, 2017; Vijai et al., 2015; Budyansky et al., 2017; Fang et al., 2017; Feng et al., 2017, 2018a, b, 2019; Igarashi et al., 2017, 2018; McKinnell & Seki, 2017; Tang et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017; Wen et al., 2017; Yu et al., 2017a, b, 2018, 2019; Hu et al., 2018; Jiao et al., 2018; Ding et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019), which is in agreement with the conditions described in the ICZN Article 23.9.1.2. Although O. bartramii is the name that has been used commonly for the remaining species in other parts of the distributional range of the genus (recent examples: Franjevic et al., 2015 and Tsiamis et al., 2015 for Mediterranean individuals; Villanueva & Sánchez, 1993 for the South Atlantic; and Guerra et al., 2010 for the South Pacific), these species are far less studied, and consequently, the name is less commonly applied to them. Therefore, either considering the name O. bartramii invalid or designating a neotype from a location outside of the North Pacific would generate further taxonomic instability and create problems in tracking the current biological information on the species, instead of solving the taxonomy of the genus.

In order to fix a suitable type locality for the species and ensure the stability of the name, the specimen NSMT-Mo 67507 from the National Museum of Nature and Science (Tokyo) is hereby designed as a neotype. The neotype locality is north-east Pacific, 41.95°N, 135.17°W GoogleMaps .