Marine Isopods from the Lesser Antilles and Colombia (crustacea: Peracarida)

-Records of shallow-water marine isopods from Colombia, Tobago, and Dominica are listed. These are derived from recent collections as well as from published records. Several new species are described: Joeropsis tobagoensis, Munna caprinsula, Anopsilana sinu, Paraimene charlesae (the second known species in the genus), Pseudocerceis latistylis (the first record of the genus in the Atlantic), Sphaeromopsis heardi, and Astacilla marna. While records of marine isopods from the overall Caribbean are relatively plentiful, the south-eastern region including the Lesser Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, is poorly represented (see Kensley & Schotte 1989). The work of H.-G. Muller in Colombia (see Table 1) has revealed the rich isopod fauna of the south-western Caribbean. With reference to marine isopods, the faunal ties with the shallow-water northern Brazilian region are slender, being about 3% of the Caribbean fauna (Kensley & Schotte 1989:262), but this figure almost certainly will change with increased collecting. This paper attempts to fill some of the gaps in the knowledge of the shallowwater isopod diversity of the southeastern Caribbean. Material was collected by both authors (BK & MS) on two separate occasions around the island of Dominica, and by the second author (MS) on a single fieldtrip to Tobago. Material from the latter island was also made available by Dr. R. W. Heard (RH), the result of two collecting trips sponsored by J. David Hardy, for a faunal survey requested by the Tobago House of Assembly. Material from two collecting trips to Colombia was made available by Dr. R. Lemaitre (RL) and Dr. Darryl Felder (DF). Much of the material from Dominica and Tobago represents either range extensions or new records, but no attempt has been made to indicate these in Table 1.