Carcinoplax mistio, a new species of goneplacid crab from the Indian Ocean (Decapoda: Brachyura: Goneplacoidea)

Abstract

Trawls from the Bay of Bengal obtained material of a new species of the goneplacid crab, Carcinoplax mistio, the sixth species of the genus known from India. The new species superficially resembles C. purpurea Rathbun, 1914, and C. sinica Chen, 1984, from the western Pacific. Records of C. sinica from the Persian Gulf are also here referred to the new species. Carcinoplax mistio n. sp. differs from its closest congeners mainly in the form of the carapace, anterolateral armature, proportions of the ambulatory legs and structure of the male pleon.

First record of goneplacid crab, Carcinoplax haswelli (Decapoda: Brachyura: Goneplacidae) from the Indian Ocean

“…5; Hsueh and Huang, 2002: 126, figs. 8D; Castro, 2007: 610 (list), 625, 639, 640; Ng and Mitra, 2019: figs. 4, 5, 6 E to H, fig.…”

“…On 22 January 2023, a single specimen of goneplacid crab, C. haswelli was collected from the trawl bycatch landing of Veraval fishing harbour (20°50 ′ N and 70°28 ′ E), Gujarat, Northwest coast of India (Figure 1). The specimen was caught through the demersal trawler targeted for the commercial group of crustaceans and the trawler was operated at an actual depth of 30-150 m. The collected specimen was identified as C. haswelli (Figure 2) by referring to taxonomic literatures Ng and Mitra, 2019;Ng and Castro, 2020). The morphometric measurements of the specimen was made using the Vernier caliper with an accuracy of 0.1 mm and the photographs of the crab were captured using the Nikon D-5300 camera.…”

“…specularis Rathbun, 1914 mentioned in the monograph of Trivedi et al . (2018) and recently, Ng and Mitra (2019) described a new species from the Bay of Bengal C . mistio .…”

“…Further, the reddish carapace colour pattern in C. sinica makes it to differ from the closest species C. purpurea (Guinot, 1989). Ng and Mitra (2019) recently described a new species, Carcinoplax mistio from the Bay of Bengal region. They stated that C. mistio superficially looks like C. sinica, particularly the transverse-shaped carapace and 2nd prominent front-lateral tooth spiniform and mildly curved; in G1 of C. sinica two-third of distal part is straight and the tip is round and short (Figure 7), on the other hand in C. mistio two-third of distal part is curved and the tip is elongated; this was observed from the holotype male (29.2 × 19.0 mm, ZSI Reg.…”

Rare deep-water crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) from Indian waters, with description of one new species

“…Nauplius, 29: e2021034 introduction The deep-water brachyuran fauna of India is moderately diverse and was substantially documented during the colonial era (Wood-Mason, 1885;1888;Wood-Mason and Alcock, 1891;1895;1896;1898;1899a;1899b;1900a;1900b;1901;Alcock and Anderson, 1894;1899;McArdle, 1900;1901;MacGilchrist, 1905;Lloyd, 1907;Kemp and Sewell, 1912). In comparison, the recently published literature revealed few reports on the deep-water Brachyura based on the collections of the deep-sea by-catch species along the peninsular coasts of India (Kumar et al, 2013;Ng and Kumar, 2015;2016;Mendoza and Devi, 2017;Ng et al, 2017a;2018a;2018b;Ng and Mitra, 2019;Mendoza et al, 2020).…”