The family Bateidae Stebbing, 1906 (Crustacea, Peracarida) in tropical America with the description of a new species

The tropical American family Bateidae Stebbing, 1906 is only composed by the genus Batea Müller, 1865. This genus includes 14 species of which 7 are distributed in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, Brazil and the Northwestern Atlantic. The rest 6 are distributed in the Pacific, mainly in Baja California and the Gulf of California. Only B. catharinensis Müller, 1865, has a distribution on both sides of America. These amphipods are easily recognized due to their peculiar degraded gnathopod 1 that is hidden by coxa 2. A new species of Batea collected in the Gulf of California is described and fully illustrated. For the first time, a dichotomous key is provided for the classification of the now 15 known species. A chronologically ordered table with the authors and years of the main papers published related to the general distribution of these species is also presented.