Micippa platipes (Rüppel, 1830)

Naderloo, Reza & Türkay, Michael, 2012, Decapod crustaceans of the littoral and shallow sublittoral Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf: Faunistics, Biodiversity and Zoogeography 3374, Zootaxa 3374 (1), pp. 1-67 : 35-36

Micippa platipes (Rüppel, 1830)

Persian Gulf. First Persian Gulf recod.

Iran. Hormozgan Province: Qeshm I., Moghdan (Parsian) . Bushehr Province: Chahak.

General distribution. Indo-West Pacific: South Africa, East Africa, Seychelles, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Pakistan, China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia (South Australia, Victoria, NSW), Hawaiian Is.

Habitat. Rocky intertidal and oyster bank, 0–23 m.

Remarks. Micippa platipes is always confused with its close congener M. philyra (Herbst, 1803) . The latter has been frequently recorded from the Persian Gulf [ Nobili (1906a) as M. philyra var. mascarenica from Arzanah I.; Stephensen (1946) as M. philyra var. mascarenica from Bahrain; Evans et al. (1973) and Titgen (1982) from UAE; Basson et al. (1977) from Saudi Arabia; Apel (2001) from Saudi Arabia and UAE]. Apel (2001) stated that the Persian Gulf records all could be clearly assigned to M. philyra . Buitendijk (1939) prepared detailed remarks in order to distinguish these two similar species, and provided synonymies for both species using literature records. By using Buitendijk (1939) and the key provided by Griffin & Tranter (1986) the present specimens from the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf could be convincingly identified as M. platipes . We could not examine the single male of Stephensen (1946) collected by Danish Expedition from Bahrain, but the drawing of the male G1 provided by Stephensen (1946: 109, fig. 21e–f) is very similar to the figure of the G1 provided by Buitendijk (1939: 253, fig. 22) for M. platipes rather than that of M. philyra . Although, Apel (2001) mentioned that the Persian Gulf specimens, which are all recorded from the Arabian coast, are M. philyra . We think that still all the material must be re-examined in order to clarify the occurrence of these two species in the Persian Gulf.