Cancer caroli Curtiss, 1938

Ng, Peter K. L., Eldredge, Lucius G. & Evenhuis, Neal L., 2011, The names of decapod and stomatopod Crustacea from Tahiti, French Polynesia, established by Anthony Curtiss in 1938 and 1944, Zootaxa 3099, pp. 43-56 : 46

Cancer caroli Curtiss, 1938 [varo]

Squilla maculata Fabricius, 1793: 511 .

Cancer caroli Curtiss, 1938: 166 .

The description and habitat of this stomatopod makes it clear this is probably what is now known as Lysiosquillina maculata ( Fabricius, 1793) (Lysiosquillidae) , which is known from French Polynesia ( Manning 1978; Ahyong 2002; Poupin 2005). Holthuis (1967: 20) was the first to regard Cancer caroli as a junior synonym of this species (as a Lysiosquilla ). The colour described by Curtiss (1938: 165): “Some males are yellow and blackish-brown, in crosswise bands; and others are banded black and whitish. Some females are pale red and blackish brown, in alternating in crosswise bands” agrees well for the colour description of this species. Lysiosquillina maculata is one of two species of lysiosquillid known from French Polynesia, the other been L. sulcata ( Manning, 1978) ( Steger & Benis-Steger 1988; Poupin 2005), but the account by Curtiss, especially its large size of up to “is from four to eleven inches long”, the largest “ten inches and a half long” ( Curtiss 1938: 165) suggests that Cancer caroli is more likely to be L. maculata (see Ahyong 2001). Unfortunately, diagnostic characters used to separate the three known Indo-West Pacific species, such as the structures of the rostral plate and antennal protopod and number of segments on the mandibular palp cannot be discerned from Curtiss’s description. This large-size species is harvested for food in many parts of its range.