Cuspidaria minima ( Egorova, 1993 )

Zettler, Michael L. & Bick, Andreas, 2025, Molluscs from a shallow bay of King George Island (Antarctica, South Shetland Islands): An annotated checklist with new distributional records, Zootaxa 5631 (3), pp. 401-450 : 423

26. Cuspidaria minima ( Egorova, 1993) [ Figs 11E–F ]

Subcuspidaria minima Egorova, 1993: 164 , pl. 3, figs 2–3

Material examined. • 1 spm, Stn. 3; • 2 spms, Stn. 6; • 1 spm, Stn. 10.

Type locality. East of Southern Orkney Islands, 430-450 m depth.

Bathymetric distribution. 15–450 m.

Substrate. Soft bottom.

Geographical distribution. ANTARCTICA: Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctic Peninsula. SUBANTARCTICA: -. SCOTIA ARC: South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands, South Shetland Islands. SOUTH AMERICA: -.

Remarks. The species differentiation between C. minima and C. concentrica Thiele, 1912 is not clear. The characteristics listed by Zelaya & Ituarte (2006) are partly blurred. In our opinion, the present material most closely resembles C. minima , whose type locality is not far (800 km) from King George Island and only 200 km from the Elephants Islands, from where Zelaya & Ituarte (2026) re-described this species. Although the posterior tooth of the left valve is somewhat weak, the right valve has a clearly posterior tooth similar to that shown in Egorova (1993) and Zelaya & Ituarte (2006). We found it in depths of 60 m. The species is already known from King George Island.

References. Egorova (1993), Engl (2012), Zelaya & Ituarte (2006), Steger et al. (2023).

Figures

FIGURE 11. A–B: Thracia meridionalis E. A. Smith, 1885; C–D: Laternula elliptica (P. P. King, 1832); E–F: Cuspidaria minima (Egorova, 1993); G–I: Cuspidaria infelix Thiele, 1912. Unless otherwise indicated, the scale is always 1 mm.