Diogenes custos Fabricius, 1798

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 : 26

Diogenes custos Fabricius, 1798

Persian Gulf. Kuwait ( Motoh 1975), Iran (Moradmand 2007).

Iran. Hormozgan Province: Kuhestak (Strait of Hormoz).

General distribution. Indo-West Pacific: East Africa, Madagascar, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Pakistan, India, Indo-Malayan Archipelago, Australia ( NSW).

Habitat. Sandy beach.

Remarks. Apel (2001) discussed the occurrence of this species in the Persian Gulf. He stated that the only record of this species is that of Motoh (1975) from Kuwait, which is more likely a misidentification of a more common species Diogenes dubius (Herbst, 1804) . Siddiqui & McLaughlin (2003) discussed on the affinities of the species with D. leavimanus , providing some detailed accounts on both. Moradmand (2007) has distinguished these two species from each other but he insisted still on close affinities between them. There is a need for taxonomic revision of the group in order to resolve their systematic problems. Apel (2001) believed that because of the several misidentification of the species, its records from different regions are ambiguous, therefore its real distribution might be different from what is considered here.