Chirostyloid and galatheoid squat lobsters (Decapoda: Anomura) from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, with three new species

ABSTRACT

The squat lobster fauna of the Andaman and Nicobar waters, India is known to be represented by more than 40 species from 19 genera and six families. Seven species, including three new to science, collected from six dedicated surveys of the Fishery Oceanographic Research Vessel Sagar Sampada during 2011–2019 are described. Gastroptychus valdiviae Balss, 1913 is redescribed based on the syntype and the newly collected material. Grimothea krishaha sp. nov. and an unidentified species provisionally assigned to Grimothea Leach, 1820 are reported. These two species of Grimothea differ from known congeners in the spination on the carapace, pleon, antennule, antenna and third maxilliped. Examination of the syntype and newly collected specimen revealed that Munida vigiliarum Alcock, 1901 should be transferred to Leptonida Macpherson and Baba in Machordom et al., 2022. Leptonida vigiliarum comb. nov. is here redescribed. Trapezionida aequispina sp. nov. differs from related species in the spination on the carapace, and in the shape and relative lengths of the second to fourth pereopod dactyli. Trapezionida bharuchai sp. nov. differs from related species in the carapace morphology, the presence of a mesial spine on the antennal peduncle second article, and the armature on pereopods. Leiogalathea sp. does not resemble known congeners in morphological aspects, but because of the poor condition of the unique specimen presently available for study, formal description is deferred in the hope that additional material will be collected. With this report, the number of species reported from the region increases to 47.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:A82CE9B3-BF67-4282-97DF-20D37CF02464

KEYWORDS:

• Chirostyloidea
• Galatheoidea
• Indian Ocean
• morphology

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Director, Centre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology, Kochi, for providing an opportunity to work on deep-water crustacean resources of the Indian EEZ. The authors are thankful to Shri. N. Saravanane, Scientist F, CMLRE and Project Co-ordinator of the ‘Resource Exploration and Inventorization System’ project. The first author acknowledges the financial support from the MoES Research Fellowship Program for carrying out this study. We thank the chief scientists, fishing hands and participants of the FORV Sagar Sampada cruise numbers 292 leg II, 334 leg I, 334 leg II, 355 leg II, 386 and 388 for meticulously collecting the specimens. The authors profusely thank Prof. Enrique Macpherson, Spanish National Research Council, Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes, Madrid, Spain for his valuable guidance in morphological comparisons. We are extremely grateful to Dr Charles Oliver Coleman, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and Dr K. Valarmathi, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, for kindly sharing the photographs of the type specimens without which this study would have been incomplete. The authors are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and suggestions that enabled us to enhance the quality of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2023.2192429

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.