Cancer arnoldorum 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 : 47

Cancer arnoldorum Curtiss, 1938 [popoti miti]

Cancer arnoldorum Curtiss, 1938: 167 .

The so-called Tahiti “sand-bug” is probably the common intertidal Hippa marmorata (Hombron & Jacquinot, 1846) , the senior synonym of the better known H. pacifica ( Dana, 1852b) ( Hippidae ). However, two other species are known from French Polynesia: H. adactyla Fabricius, 1787 , and H. ovalis A. Milne-Edwards, 1862 ( Poupin 1996, 2005), and their conspecificity with Cancer arnoldorum cannot be discounted. In any case, a revision of the genus is urgently needed (Boyko & McLaughlin 2011) and Curtiss’s name should be resolved conclusively then, perhaps with the appropriate designation of a neotype. Joseph Poupin (personal communication) commented that he collected an ovigerous female, ostensibly of Cancer arnoldorum , among the black sand in front of Vaitepiha River near Tautira in Tahiti, with his photograph showing a bluish-purple animal. This agrees well with the colour described by Curtiss (1938: 167): “The front part of its body is bluish above, with an almost smooth shell, and whitish underneath”. Like in other parts of the Pacific, these and their allies (the so-called mole crabs) are often harvested for food.