Hermit crabs (Crustacea Decapoda Anomura) of the Maldives with the description of a new species of Catapagurus A. Milne Edwards 1880

Abstract

In a collection of hermit crabs from supralittoral, intertidal, and subtidal areas of the Maldive archipelago (latitudes 7°0′N and 0°4′S, longitudes 72°30′ and 73°40′E), 27 species were found, belonging to the genera Coenobita Latreille 1829 (family Coenobitidae), Calcinus Dana 1851, Ciliopagurus Forest 1995, Clibanarius Dana 1852, Dardanus Paul'son 1875, Diogenes Dana 1851, Paguristes Dana 1851 (family Diogenidae), and Catapagurus A. Milne Edwards 1880, Micropagurus McLaughlin 1986, Pagurixus Melin 1939, Pylopaguropsis Alcock 1905, and Trichopagurus de Saint Laurent 1970 (family Paguridae). This hermit fauna was in part composed of species widely distributed within the Western Indian Ocean (12 species); seven species were previously known from a few localities, seven were recorded for the first time in the Western Indian Ocean, that is Calcinus guamensis Wooster 1984, C. pulcher Forest 1958, Calcinus sp., Clibanarius boschmai Buitendijk 1937, C. corallinus (H. Milne Edwards 1848), Micropagurus polynesiensis (Nobili 1907), and Trichopagurus trichoph-thalmus (Forest 1954). A new species, Catapagurus alcocki, is described and illustrated by one of the authors. The species composition from this archipelago is discussed and compared with lists previously compiled for other areas of the Western Indian Ocean. As shown by a clustering technique, the Maldives hermit crab fauna has a closer affinity with the cluster composed by the Mascarenes, Seychelles, Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, and Tanzania, than the geographically closer Western India and Sri Lanka.

Key Words:

• hermit crabs
• Maldives
• Western Indian Ocean