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nitida

History

Primary Senior Synonym
Unknown
Original Usage
Goneplax nitida
Original Source with Priority
Desmarest, A.-G. (1817) Crustacés fossiles. Pp. 495–519 in Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, appliquée aux arts, à l'Agriculture, à l'économie rurale et domestique, à l'médecine, etc. Par une société de naturalistes et d'agriculteurs, Volume VIII. Paris: Deterville.
Derivation
unknown

Locations Where the Name has Been Applied

Number of Uses of Name per Year

Notes/Comments

The specific name nitida was originally used by Desmarest (1817) with resepct to a fossil specimen (no longer extant) and the genus Goneplax. In 1822 he shifted this fossil to the genus Gelasmius as well as applying it to an extant species. H. Milne Edwards (1837) cites Desmarest's fossil and use of the name with Gelasmius.

Dana (1851) apparently independently used the identical name for a fiddler crab from Fiji (specimen no longer extant). Dana's use of the name is the one subsequently followed by most authors for the century following its publication, including H. Milne Edwards (1852) who referenced Dana and made no mention of the Desmarest fossil. Today Dana's species is known as Gelasimus excisa (Nobili, 1906).

As things currently stand, Gelasimus nitida Dana, 1851, is considered a junior homonym of Gonexplax nitida Desmarest, 1817. If Desmaret's fossil specimen were found and turned out not to be a fiddler crab, then Dana's use of nitida would no longer be a homonym and would have priority over excisa.

Binomials Using this Specific Name