Amsterdam Expeditions to the West Indian Islands, Report 34. The subfamily Candoninae (Crustacea, Ostracoda) in the West Indies

Nine new species, two new genera, and two new subgenera of the subfamily Candoninae are described, viz.: a species of the genus Candonopsis, C. hummelincki, probably epigean, with a wide distribution; two new species of the genus Pseudocandona, both elongate in shape, Ps. geratsi, interstitial, in several states of Venezuela, and Ps. antilliana, epigean, widespread throughout the Antillean Islands, including Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola; and two species of Pseudocandona with less elongate, reticulated carapaces and a straight dorsal margin, viz. Ps. caribbeana, interstitial, in brooks and small rivers in Jamaica and Venezuela, and Ps. cubensis, troglobitic, found in cave waters in Cuba. A new hypogean genus of Candoninae, Caribecandona, is described, and divided into two subgenera, one endemic to Cuba ( Cubacandona n. subgen., type-species Candonopsis cubensis Danielopol, 1978), and one endemic to Hispaniola (Caribecandona n. subgen., with three new species: C. trapezoidea, C. auricularia and C. ansa). Another new hypogean genus, Danielocandona, with one new species, D. lieshoutae, was discovered in a well in Calabozo (Venezuela, Estado Guárico). The two new genera, with their trapezoidal carapaces, seem to be relicts of an old tertiary fauna, which did not survive in epigean waters, but only in hypogean habitats in the larger islands Hispaniola and Cuba, which are probably fragments of an old continental plate, and in the mainland of Venezuela. On the sampled smaller islands of the West Indies no hypogean freshwater Ostracoda seem to have evolved. This probably means that these islands are much younger, and could not recrute any hypogean species from the old Candoninae stock, the ancestral forms being by then probably extinct.