Genetic evidence for the recognition of two fiddler crabs, Uca iranica and U. albimana (Crustacea: Brachyura: Ocypodidae), from the northwestern Indian Ocean, with notes on the U. lactea species-complex

Abstract

The status of two poorly

Uca (Xeruca), a new subgenus for the Taiwanese fiddler crab Uca formosensis Rathbun, 1921 (Crustacea: Decapoda: Ocypodidae), based on morphological and molecular evidence

“…After Crane (1975), the systematics of fiddler crabs has been revised by Rosenberg (2001) and Beinlich & von Hagen (2006), with the IWP broad-fronted groups studied by Shih et al (2009aShih et al ( , 2013b and Naderloo et al (2010). Uca formosensis was established by Rathbun (1921), but only less than a dozen museum specimens could be examined until the 1980s (Crane 1975: 83;Barnwell 1982) and Crane mentioned it as an "elusive species."…”

Allopatry and overlap in a clade of snails from mangroves and mud flats in the Indo-West Pacific and Mediterranean (Gastropoda: Potamididae:Cerithideopsilla)

“…The distributions of Cerithideopsilla species show a geographical signal that implies allopatric or parapatric speciation, as in other studies of diversification in mud‐flat and mangrove‐associated animals (Shih & Suzuki, ; Shih et al ., ; Yin et al ., ; Reid et al ., , ; Golding, ; Chen et al ., ; Polgar et al ., ; Reid & Claremont, ) and in the marine realm in general (Bellwood et al ., ; Bowen et al ., ). Nevertheless, four of the six sister‐species pairs (including one trichotomy) show extensive overlap (100% of the range of the more narrowly distributed member of each pair).…”

“…Some members of the mangrove fauna have been included in molecular phylogenetic analyses, either within wider systematic studies (e.g. Schubart et al ., ) or in taxonomic groups that range across adjacent habitats such as intertidal rocky (Frey & Vermeij, ; Frey, ) and sedimentary shores (Shih & Suzuki, ; Ozawa et al ., ; Shih et al ., ; Yin et al ., ; Golding, ; Chen et al ., ; Polgar et al ., ). However, studies of strictly mangrove‐associated clades, from which to draw inferences about phylogeography and diversification within the mangrove biotope itself, are rare.…”

Tubuca alcocki, a new pseudocryptic species of fiddler crab from the Indian Ocean, sister to the southeastern African T. urvillei (H. Milne Edwards, 1852) (Crustacea, Decapoda, Brachyura, Ocypodidae)

“…In recent years, various genetic and morphological studies on fiddler crabs (Ocypodidae) from the Indian Ocean have shown that there are a number of species endemic to the region: Austruca albimana (Kossmann, 1877), A. bengali (Crane, 1975), A. iranica (Pretzmann, 1971), A. occidentalis (Naderloo, Schubart & Shih, 2016), A. sindensis (Alcock, 1900), Cranuca inversa (Hoffmann, 1874), Paraleptuca chlorophthalmus (H. Milne Edwards, 1837), Gelasimus hesperiae (Crane, 1975), and Tubuca urvillei (H. Milne Edwards, 1852) (Shih et al 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013a,b, 2015, 2016; Naderloo et al 2016). The genetics suggest that the cladogenesis of these taxa have their origins in the Indian Ocean.…”