Contributions to the Knowledge of the Alpheid Shrimp of the Pacific Ocean Part VII. On Metabetaeus Borradaile, with a New Species from Hawaii!

THE GENUS Metabetaeus was describ ed by Borradaile (1898 : 1014) to contain the species originally describ ed by Whitelegge ( 1897: 147 ) as Betaeus minutus. These descriptions and Couriere's subsequent discussion of the genus ( 1899: 374 ) were all based on a series of specimens collected at Funafuti in the Ellice Arch ipelago. Nothing more on either the genus or the species was recorded until R. W. Hiatt collected additional specimens of the species in a brackish pond at Arno in the Marshall Islands (Banner, 1957 : 193 ). Since the publication of the 1957 paper, additional specimens belonging to this genus have been observed alive and collected. M. minutus was taken from two different islets on ]aluit in the Marshall Islands during a trip in-April, 1958, to observe typhoon damage on that atoll. The trip was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the Pacific Science Board, and the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. More interesting is a new species of the genus collected from one locality on the island of Hawaii. The first several specimens came to us from the collections of the Bishop Museum; they had been collected in a pool in the Ka 'u district of Hawaii by E. H. Bryan, ] r., Marian Kelly, and William Meinecke. In February, 1958, we collected more specimens from this pool. Many other pools, both in the Ka 'u district and in other areas on other islands, were investigated, but no more specimens of this species were seen. This study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant NSFG-3863. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Mr . William Meinecke, who guided them to