Robertgurneya is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of copepod

Copepod

Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every freshwater habitat. Some species are planktonic , some are benthic , and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests,...

s, containing the following species:

• Robertgurneya arabica (Noodt, 1964)
• Robertgurneya brevipes Wells & Rao, 1987
• Robertgurneya dactylifer (C. B. Wilson, 1931)
• Robertgurneya dictydiophora (Monard, 1928)
• Robertgurneya diversa Lang, 1965
• Robertgurneya ecaudata (Monard, 1936)
• Robertgurneya erythraea (A. Scott, 1902)
• Robertgurneya falklandiensis (Lang, 1936)
• Robertgurneya hopkinsi Lang, 1965
• Robertgurneya ilievecensis (Monard, 1935)
• Robertgurneya intermedia Bozic, 1955
• Robertgurneya oligochaeta Noodt, 1955
• Robertgurneya remanei Klie, 1950
• Robertgurneya rostrata (Gurney, 1927)
• Robertgurneya simulans (Norman & T. Scott, 1905)
• Robertgurneya smithi Hamond, 1973
• Robertgurneya soyeri Apostolov, 1974
• Robertgurneya spinulosa (G. O. Sars, 1911)
• Robertgurneya tenax (Brian, 1927)

Taxonomic history

The genus Robertgurneya was first diagnosed by Karl Georg Herman Lang

Karl Georg Herman Lang

Karl Georg Herman Lang was a Swedish zoologist, specialising in crustaceans, especially harpacticoid copepods and tanaids. He was born in Malmö and gained a doctoral degree from the Lund University in 1924. He spent much of his early career working as a teacher in elementary schools in Eslöv, Lund...

 in 1944, with the name commemorating Robert Gurney

Robert Gurney

Robert Gurney was a British zoologist most famous for his monographs on British Freshwater Copepoda and the Larvae of Decapod Crustacea . He was not affiliated with any institution, but worked at home, initially in Norfolk, and later near Oxford...

. Since Lang did not designate a type species

Type species

In biological nomenclature, a type species is both a concept and a practical system which is used in the classification and nomenclature of animals and plants. The value of a "type species" lies in the fact that it makes clear what is meant by a particular genus name. A type species is the species...

, as required by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals...

for generic names published since 1930, that name is not "available". The first authors to explicitly designate a type species were Apostolov & Marinov in 1988, and they are therefore considered the authors of the genus.