Sphenomerides trapezioides (Wood-Mason & Alcock, 1891)

Silambarasan, Krishnan, Kar, Annada Bhusan, Prasad, Gummadi Venkata Ankineedu, Pattnayak, Sujit Kumar, Das, Pratyush, Reddy, Dwarampudi Bhami & Ramalingam, Lakshmana Perumal, 2023, On some commensal anomuran and brachyuran crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) off Visakhapatnam, Northwestern Bay of Bengal, Zootaxa 5325 (4), pp. 541-555 : 550

Sphenomerides trapezioides (Wood-Mason in Wood-Mason & Alcock, 1891)

( Fig. 4C )

Restricted synonymy:

Sphenomerus trapezioides Wood-Mason, 1891: 263 .—Wood-Mason, 1892b, pl. 5, fig. 2.— Wood-Mason & Alcock, 1891, p. 263.— Alcock, 1898: 228.— Rao, 2010: 198.

Sphenomerides trapezioides .— Alcock, 1899a: 66.— Alcock & Anderson, 1899: 5.— Castro et al., 2004: 60, pl. 4E.— Ng et al., 2008: 185.— Dev Roy & Nandi, 2012: 207.— Huys et al., 2014: 15.— Trivedi et al., 2018: 74.

Material examined. FSI/ CRUST: 236, 1 male (CL 15.0 mm, CW 9.0 mm), 17°57.9’N, 83°53.5’E, 48–49 m, on Antipathes sp. , coll. K. Silambarasan, 15 December 2019 .

Distribution. Madagascar, Sulu, Moluccas, Banda Sea ( Castro et al. 2004), Andaman and Nicobar Islands ( Trivedi et al. 2018). The present record from Visakhapatnam is the first report from off mainland India.

Commensalism. According to Castro (2013), the hosts are deep sea sponges. Our specimen was collected from the soft tree coral, Antipathes sp. , from Visakhapatnam waters, probably the first report of its association with corals.

Remarks. The single specimen of this widespread species presents an interesting new record from the mainland coast of India.

Figures

FIGURE 4. Brachyura associated with cnidarians collected from northwestern Bay of Bengal:A, Quadrella maculosa Alcock, 1898; B, Quadrella coronata Dana, 1852; C, Sphenomerides trapezioides (Wood-Mason in Wood-Mason & Alcock, 1891); D, Dorippoides facchino (Herbst, 1785).