Fig. [269].—Eurycide hispida, Kr., showing stalked proboscis and zigzag palps.
Palpi.—The second pair of appendages, or palps, are absent, or all but absent, in the adult Pycnogonum, Phoxichilus, Phoxichilidium, Pallene, and their allies. In certain of these cases, e.g. Phoxichilidium, a knob remains to mark their place; in others, e.g. Pallenopsis, a single joint remains; in a few Pallenidae a sexual difference is manifested, reduction of the appendage being carried further in the female than in the male. The composition of the palps varies in the genera that possess them. In Nymphon there are five joints, and their relative lengths (especially of the terminal ones) are much used by Sars in defining the many species of the genus. The recently described Paranymphon, Caullery, has palps of six or seven joints. In the Ammotheidae the number of joints ranges from five or six in Tanystylum to nine (as a rule) in Ammothea and Oorhynchus, or ten, according to Dohrn, in certain species of Ammothea. Colossendeis and the Eurycididae have a ten-jointed palp, which in this last family is very long and bent in zigzag fashion, as it is, by the way, also in Ammothea. The terminal joints of the palp are in all cases more or less setose, and their function is conjecturally tactile.
Ovigerous Legs.—Custom sanctions for these organs an inappropriate name, inasmuch as it is only in the males that they perform the function which the name connotes.[[397]] They probably also take some part, as Hodgson suggests, in the act of feeding.
Fig. [270].—Ovigerous legs of A, Phoxichilus spinosus, Mont.; B, Phoxichilidium femoratum, Rathke; C, Anoplodactylus petiolatus, Kr.; D, Colossendeis proboscideus, Sab.
Fig. [271].—Terminal joints of ovigerous leg of Rhynchothorax mediterraneus, Costa.
Fig. [272].—Nymphon brevirostre, Hodge. Terminal joints of ovigerous leg, with magnified “tooth.”