Medaeops neglectus (Balss, 1920)

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 : 44

Medaeops neglectus (Balss, 1920)

Persian Gulf. First Persian Gulf record.

Iran. Hormozgan Province: Qeshm I. (Zeytun Park Beach, Dustku).

General distribution. Western Indian Ocean: East Africa, Madagascar, Mayotte I., Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Persian Guf, Gulf of Oman.

Habitat. Rocky/cobble intertidal.

Remarks. Apel (2001) collected two specimens (one male and one female) from Abu Dhabi ( UAE) in the Persian Gulf and identified them as M. granulosus (Haswell, 1882) . One of us (R.N.) examined his specimens and found that they are completely similar to the present ones from the Iranian coast and could be convincingly assigned to M. neglectus rather than to M. granulosus . The latter was recorded as Medaeus granulosus by Stephensen (1946) from Jask at the Iranian coast of the Gulf of Oman, which is supported after a re-examination of his material. Stephensen’s (1946) material of M. granulosus was collected by the Danish Expedition in the subtidal zone at 30 m depth and the locality is outside of the Persian Gulf. The genus Medaeops currently includes seven very closely related species, of which Medaeops potens Mendoza, Chong & Ng, 2009 , has a first male gonopod, which is very similar to that of M. neglectus , but regarding morphological description and keys provided by Guinot (1967), Serène (1984), McLay & Ng (2007) and Mendoza et al. (2009), the present specimens from the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf can clearly be assigned to M. neglectus rather than any other congener. Medaeops granulosus was recorded by Jones (1986a) from Kuwait, and Tirmizi & Ghani (1996) from Pakistan. Apel (2001) stated that their record of the species is correct, whereas the drawings provided by them are very similar to M. neglectus . A thorough taxonomic revision of the genus is needed in order to clarify the position of the different species of Medaeops .