Littoral mud shrimps (Decapoda: Gebiidea & Axiidea) of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, Iran

Abstract

The mud shrimps of Iran are not well known. Material for the present study was collected from 21 out of 51 intertidal localities from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, Iran. In total, 11 species were found along the Iranian coast. These were belonging to three families, including Upogebiidae (Upogebia carinicauda, U. darwinii and U. pseudochelata), Callianassidae (Neocallichirus jousseaumei, N. calmani, Callichirus masoomi, Corallianassa coutierei, Michaelcallianassa indica, Paratrypaea bouvieri and Gourretia coolibah) and Callianideidae (Callianidea typa). Geographical distributions of the species were considered and the results show that each species is totally dependent on a special type of habitat. Comparing different types of habitat, sandy and muddy substrates of the intertidal and shallow subtidal zone are found as the dominant habitat type for all species, but some species have a preference for boulder dominated coasts or occupy already existing holes and crevices in the boulder and bedrocks. In addition, the world distribution of each species was considered, and according to their present recorded localities, these are grouped into two distributional categories including the Indo-West Pacific region and one in a broader area of the Indo-Pacific.

Host specificity and microhabitat preference of symbiotic copepods (Cyclopoida: Clausiididae) associated with ghost shrimps (Decapoda: Callichiridae, Callianideidae)

“…Other factors, for example, ecological or ethological conditions, may account for the failure of the clausidium to occupy the other ghost shrimps species. The ghost shrimps are different in habitat selection, trophic modes as well as in burrowing pattern (Griffis & Suchanek, 1991; Sepahvand, Sari, Salehi, Nabavi, & Ghorbanzadeh, 2013). Hence, each of these factors may affect the host selection of clausidium copepods in the Persian Gulf.…”

Functional morphology of the male reproductive system in Callichirus major (Crustacea: Decapoda: Axiidea): Evidence of oocytes in the gonad

“…Several studies have been accomplished on taxonomic and ecologic aspects of the population and reproductive biology of Axiidea species, including C. major (Botter-Carvalho et al 2002, 2007Hernaez et al 2012;Sepahvand et al 2012;Peiró et al 2014;). However, thus far there have been no morphohistological descriptions of the reproductive organs of these animals, in particular for the male individuals.…”

Two new species ofClausidiumcopepods (Crustacea, Poecilostomatoida) associated with ghost shrimps from Iran

“…Ghost shrimps or mud shrimps, representatives of the infraorders Axiidea and Gebiidea, are among the most common benthic macro-invertebrates in littoral zones of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman (Sepahvand et al ., 2013). These shrimps are adapted to a burrowing lifestyle and their burrows can also be occupied by a variety of organisms, including copepods (Dworschak et al ., 2012).…”

“…According to Sepahvand et al . (2013) two out of 11 species of burrowing shrimps recorded from the littoral zone of Iran have associated copepods from the genus Clausidium . Although these clausidiid copepods are relatively rarely recorded because of the cryptic lifestyle of their hosts, a total of 14 species of Clausidium have been described so far (Walter & Boxshall, 2017).…”