The checklist deals with all the existing species of both living and fossil ostracods in the area conventionally called Southeast Asia which lies between 25°N and 11°S latitude and 140°E and 85°E longitude (excluding continental China).

Information on each species which was described originally from Southeast Asia was arranged in the following sequence: revised specific name; synonymies; information on types; type locality; known occurrence; and nomenclatural remarks if there are any. Revised specific name and its synonymies are followed directly by known occurrence in the case of a species originally described outside of Southeast Asia.

The descriptions which resulted from the old expeditions and were prepared before the switching over from the typological to the population concept provide two kinds of information which may still be useful in present-day studies of first-rate intellectual interest. One is the species identifications, if they were correctly done, and the other is the records of the occurrence of the species. The importance of the correct identification and synonymy needs no amplification. It is, however, quite beyond our capacity to complete identification by examining all of the type material which is found in insti tutions scattered all over the world. The only overseas investigation was made in 1968 by Hanai at the type collection of Southeast Asian Cenozoic ostracods at the University of Utrecht Micropaleontological Laboratory. In some cases where only obscure illus trations were available, comparison with samples from the Southeast Asian seas, kept in the University Museum, University of Tokyo, and Institute of Geosciences, Shizu-oka University, often proved useful in reaffirming assignment of the original name.

In this checklist, records of all the known occurrences are given in full for each species. This is mainly because the field approaches to the problem of speciation should preferably be based on the studies of geographic distribution of the intraspecific variations covering the entire area of distribution of the species, and because the slightest difference in geographic location, depth of water, stratigraphic horizon, etc. may have a drastic effect on the occurrence of the species.

Information on the primary types may also be useful in terms of nomenclature, when one considers the functional role of the type as a name-bearer which mediates the indirect casual relation between the species as referent and the scientific name as a symbol. Institutions where types are actually preserved are listed using the following abbreviations:

BB:

Bundesanstalt für Bodenforschung, Hannover, West Germany

BMNH:

British Museum, Natural History, London, England

CERS:

Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Scientifiques, Biarritz, France

CKUM:

Geology Museum, Cheng Kung University, Chengkung, Taiwan

CSM:

Paleontological Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, U. S. A.

GMB:

Government Geological Museum of Bandung, Bandung, Java

GSI:

Geological Survey of India, Calcutta, India

HMNT:

Hancock Museum, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England

IOBC:

Indian Ocean Biological Center, National Institute of Oceanography, Cochin, India

LSU:

School of Geoscience, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U. S. A. (H. V. Howe Collection)

MOCR:

Myanma Oil Corporation, Rangoon, Burma

NILZ:

Foreign Geology Laboratory, All-Union Geological Prospecting Research Institute, Leningrad, U. S. S. R.

ONGC:

Oil and Natural Gas Commission, Dehra Dun, India

SGWG:

Sektion Geologische Wissenschaften, Ernst-Moritz-Andt-Universität, Greifswald, East Germany

SUU:

Mineralogical-Geological Institute, State University of Utrecht, Utrecht, Holland

USNM:

United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D. C., U. S. A.

ZIK:

Zoologisches Institut, Universität, Kiel, West Germany

ZMA:

Zoological Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
ZMH:

Zoologisches Museum, Hamburg, West Germany

ZMO:

Zoological Museum, Oslo, Norway

ZMUC:

Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

The location of the large and important ostracod collections of the German deep-sea expedition (Valdivia), 1898-1899 and the Dutch Siboga expedition, 1899-1900, have not been ascertained.

The system followed in this checklist is essentially the traditional one with some tentative emendations. For explanation of the emendations refer to the checklist of Japanese ostracods (Hanai et al., 1977, p. 2, 3). Information on 696 species and 14 subspecies described up to the end of 1977 from Southeast Asia are presented in this checklist.