Stomatopod Crustacea of Suriname

The present report is based in the first place on material collected by the trawler “Coquette”, which, from April to August 1957, explored the offshore waters of Suriname and French Guiana from the mouth of the Nickerie River in the west to the Iles de Salut in the east. Most of the hauls were made at a distance of 20 to 30 miles from the coast. The paper also considers the Stomatopoda collected off the Suriname coast by the Suriname Fisheries Service. To date, only one species of stomatopod has been reported from Suriname, viz. “Gonodactylus chiragra Fabr.”, so named by NEUMANN (1878, p. 39), who reported on a specimen which is preserved in the collection of the Heidelberg Museum and was said to have originated from Suriname. As has been shown by HOLTHUIS (1959, p. 14) NEUMANN’S so-called Suriname material is very likely incorrectly labelled, and was more probably collected in the West Indian Islands. Accordingly, this record had better be ignored.