International Journal of Marine Science, 2017, Vol.7, No.36, 361-365
361
Research Report Open Access
First Records of Two Pilumnid Crabs:
Pilumnopeus convexus
Maccagno 1936
and
Eurycarcinus orientalis
Edwards 1867 (Crustacea, Decapoda, Pilumnidae)
from Khor Al-Zubair Canal, South of Iraq
Khaled Kh. Al-Khafaji
, Khary D. Saoud, Tariq H.Y. Al-Maliky
Department of Marine Biology, Marine Science Center, University of Basrah, Iraq
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science, 2017, Vol.7, No.36 doi
Received: 09 Aug., 2017
Accepted: 30 Aug., 2017
Published: 11 Sep., 2017
Copyright © 2017
Al-Khafaji et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Al-Khafaji Kh.Kh., Saoud K.D., and Al-Maliky T.H.Y., 2017, First records of two pilumnid crabs:
Pilumnopeus convexus
and
Eurycarcinus orientalis
(Crustacea, Decapoda, Pilumnidae) from Khor Al-Zubair canal, south of Iraq, International Journal of Marine Science, 7(36): 361-365 (doi:
Abstract
Two species of pilumnid crabs:
Pilumnopeus convexus
(Maccagno, 1936) and
Eurycarcinus orientalis
(Edwards, 1867)
were collected during 2016. The material was mostly hand-collected from the intertidal zone during lower tide of Khor Al-Zubair
canal, Basrah, Iraq, far from the Arabian Gulf coasts. A note on the morphological features of these two species and a photograph is
provided to confirm the identification of the two crabs. The present study reports the presence of the two species from Khor
Al-Zubair canal, which lies outside the distribution range of these species.
Keywords
First records; Khor Al-Zubair; Arabian Gulf; Pilumnidae
Introduction
The family Pilumnidae is one of the most common families in the Arabian Gulf. Apel (2001) listed 23 Pilumnid
species from the Arabian (Persian Gulf). Cooper (1997) has recorded this species from mangroves and sandy
beach of northeastern coastal islands of Abu-Dhabi (Persian Gulf).
P. convexus
(Maccagno, 1936) is the most common species in the intertidal zones of the Arabian Gulf and
northern Arabian sea, found in variety of habitats including rocky, cobble, oyster banks, muddy, and mangroves
(Ghani and Davie, 2000; Apel, 2001).
The species
P. convexus
was previously considered to be
Heteropanope glabra
(Stimpson, 1858), but a close
examination revealed that it is a different one and could be
P. convexus
(Cooper, 1997).
The pilumnid crab genus Eurycarcinus is represented by two species,
E. orientalis
and
E. integrifrons
in coast of
northwest of Arabian Gulf. Although the species had been confused with
E. integrifrons
in the past, the two taxa
actually are quite different, and their types differ markedly (Apel, 2001).
E. orientalis
is so far listed from Saudi Arabia (Basson et al., 1977), Kuwait (Titgen, 1982), Bahrain (Jones, 1986),
Dubai (Hornby, 1997), the coasts of the UAE and Qatar (Cooper, 1997), Iran (Naderloo and Türkay, 2012).
The specimens of two species in intertidal zone of Khor Al-Zubair canal were collected with other species under
stone, one was
Nasima dotilliformis
(Alcock, 1900) and the other
Parasesarma persicum
(Naderloo and Schubart,
2010), the present record has extended the distribution of these species outside the Arabian gulf.
1 Materials and Methods
Eighteen specimens of
P. convexus
and twenty-six specimens of
E. orientalis
were handpicked during low tide at
the intertidal zone of Khor Al-Zubair canal. Approximately 15 km off the south Al-Zubair bridge on Shatt
Al-Basrah and Shatt Al-Basrah Canal (Figure 1).
The specimens of two species were collected mainly by hands under a rock or in burrows of muddy coasts.
