Austruca Bott, 1973

Shih, Hsi-Te, Ng, Peter K. L., Davie, Peter J. F., Schubart, Christoph D., Türkay, Michael, Naderloo, Reza, Jones, Diana & Liu, Min-Yun, 2016, Systematics of the family Ocypodidae Rafinesque, 1815 (Crustacea: Brachyura), based on phylogenetic relationships, with a reorganization of subfamily rankings and a review of the taxonomic status of Uca Leach, 1814, sensu lato and its subgenera, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 64, pp. 139-175 : 151-153

Austruca Bott, 1973 , status nov.

( Fig. 8 )

Austruca Bott, 1973b: 322 . Type species: Gelasimus annulipes H. Milne Edwards, 1837 by original designation.

Diagnosis. Small- to medium-sized species (carapace width about 15 mm in adults); dorsal carapace surface smooth, with or without posterolateral striae; front broad; cornea round; eyestalks slender; adult male cheliped very large, right- or left-handed, pollex sometimes with ventral carina, outer surface of major manus smooth, without depression near base of pollex, carpal cavity with distal extension; male pleonites free; with pleonal clasping apparatus; gastric mill without large brownish setae at base of posterior tooth plate. Indo-West Pacific.

Species included:

1. Austruca albimana ( Kossmann, 1877)

2. Austruca annulipes (H. Milne Edwards, 1837)

= Gelasimus porcellanus White, 1847

= Uca consobrinus Verwey, 1930

3. Austruca bengali ( Crane, 1975)

4. Austruca cryptica ( Naderloo, Türkay & Chen, 2010) 5. Austruca iranica ( Pretzmann, 1971)

6. Austruca lactea (De Haan, 1835)

= Gelasimus forceps H. Milne Edwards, 1837

7. Austruca occidentalis ( Naderloo, Schubart & Shih, 2016) 8. Austruca mjoebergi ( Rathbun, 1924)

9. Austruca perplexa (H. Milne Edwards, 1852)

= Uca annulipes var. orientalis Nobili, 1901

10. Austruca sindensis ( Alcock, 1900)

11. Austruca triangularis (A. Milne-Edwards, 1873)

Remarks. Most species of Austruca agree well with Crane’s (1975) definition of the IWP Celuca , with the exception of U. sindensis (cf. Shih et al., 2013b; Fig. 2 ) which was previously placed under Paraleptuca (= Amphiuca Crane 1975 ). One main character of Paraleptuca is the outer major manus with a small round depression near pollex base which does not appear in Austruca , including A. sindensis . Austruca is widely-distributed in the IWP ( Fig. 4 ), with four species added since Crane (1975), viz., A. albimana , A. cryptica , A. iranica and A. occidentalis ( Shih et al., 2009; Naderloo et al., 2010, 2016). The genus contains three species-complexes: 1) the U. lactea complex with seven species, including an unnamed species from East Africa, twice as many as listed in Crane (1975); 2) U. triangularis and U. bengali as revealed in this study; 3) U. sindensis ( Fig. 2 ).

Figures

Fig. 8. Photographs of some species of the genus Austruca. A, A. annulipes (Tioman, Malaysia); B, A. bengali (Selangor, Malaysia); C, A. iranica (Iran); D, A. lactea (Taiwan); E, A. mjoebergi (New Territory, Australia); F, A. perplexa (Dongsha, Taiwan); G, A. sindensis (Iran); H, A. triangularis (Cebu, Philippines). E, courtesy of P. Backwell.

Fig. 2. A Bayesian inference (BI) tree of the family Ocypodidae and outgroups, based on the combined 28S, 16S and COI markers. The solid circle at the node means it is strongly supported by both BI (≥ 90) and ML (≥ 70); and the open circle means only one method is strongly supported. Name of species or genus quoted means it is suggested as a synonym in this study.

Fig. 4. The distribution of 11 genera of fiddler crabs, mainly based on Crane (1975) and the website (http://www.fiddlercrab.info/index. html; Rosenberg, 2014).