Estuarine and marine brachyuran crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) from Bahia, Brazil: checklist and zoogeographical considerations

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The coast of the state of Bahia in eastern Brazil comprises more than 12% of the entire Brazilian coast. However, the crustacean fauna of this area still remains poorly known, especially the shallow-water fauna. We provide here a list of 162 brachyuran crustaceans known for the Bahia coast, based on published records as well as material deposited in the Carcinological Collection of the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Bahia. The list includes estuarine and marine species (from coastal beaches to the continental shelf and slope) that have been reported at least once in the study area. Regarding longitudinal distribution patterns, five species are circum-tropical, nine are amphi-Atlantic, and two are amphi-American. The portunid Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867) is an introduced Indo-West Pacific species. The remaining 145 species are native to the western Atlantic; 17 of these are endemic to Brazil. A total of 46 species (28.4%) have the southernmost limit of their known ranges in the western Atlantic between Bahia and the state of Rio de Janeiro, which suggests, for this group, the existence of a wide transition area between the Brazilian and Paulista zoogeographic provinces. Finally, two small range extensions in the western Atlantic are reported: the hymenosomatid Elamena gordonae Monod, 1956 from Camamu Bay (13°54'14"S) to Nova Viçosa (17°53'00.9"S), and the sesarmid Sesarma curacaoense De Man, 1892 from Ilhéus (15°04'58.6"S) to Mucuri (18°05'38'S).

Distribution of macroinvertebrates on intertidal rocky shores in Gorgona Island, Colombia (Tropical Eastern Pacific)

“…Several studies have demonstrated that mollusks and crustaceans are the richest and most abundant taxa in marine benthic communities (Archambault & Bourget, 1996;De Almeida & Coelho, 2008); this has also been the case for Gorgona island and other places along the Pacific coast of Colombia, such as Bahía Málaga, Golfo de Cupica and Cabo Marzo (invemar et al, 2006;.…”

A molecular sequence proxy for Muusoctopus januarii and calibration of recent divergence among a group of mesobenthic octopuses

“…This is a major barrier to the movement of marine species, forming a natural faunal boundary for many organisms (de Almeida and Coelho, 2008), and octopuses, as with most other cephalopods, cannot tolerate large seawater salinity fluctuations (Potts and Todd, 1965;Wells, 1978). However, any effects of the Amazon on the distribution of M. januarii are unclear, since initiation of the Amazon system (around 11 Mya; Figueiredo et al, 2009) may have occurred after M. januarii was already established in the Atlantic.…”

Mithracinae (Decapoda: Brachyura) from the Brazilian coast: review of the geographical distribution and comments on the biogeography of the group

“…Mithrax tortugae Rathbun, 1920 -Geographic distribution: Western Atlantic -Florida, Antilles, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil (Pará, Pernambuco, Alagoas and from Bahia to São Paulo and Santa Catarina) (Coelho et al, 1990;Melo, 1998;Rieger and Giraldi, 2001;Coelho et al, 2002;Almeida and Coelho, 2008).…”