Records of Two Lancelet Species, Asymmetron Maldivense and A. Lucayanum, From the Western North Pacific

With Text-figures 1-2 and Tables 12Recently I had a chance to examine five specimens of lancelets collected in the western North Pacific.A sigle lancelet was found by Dr. Masatsune Takeda, National Science Museum, Tokyo, in the benthos samples dredged under the research programme of "Natural History of the Pacific Ocean Side of Southwest Japan" (a part of the Natural History Research Project of the Japanese Islands by National Science Museum), at a depth of about 50 m around Tanegasima Island near the south end of Kyusyu Island, Japan.This specimen is identifiable, though tentatively, with A.rymmetron maldivense (Forster-Cooper, 1903) in spite of a striking deformation seen in one of the important features defining the genus.Evidently this is the second species of lancelets found in the Japanese waters and at the same time gives a new locality for the species.One of the other specimens is a finely preserved one identified exactly with A.rymmetron lucayanum Andrews, 1893, that was collected from the Palao Islands in the Western Caroline Islands and included in the collection ofDr.Tokioka.The rest three are the specimens of the same species, that were collected by Mr.