Schizophrys aspera (H. Milne Edwards, 1834)

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 : 36

Schizophrys aspera (H. Milne Edwards, 1834)

Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia ( Basson et al. 1977), UAE ( Nobili, 1906a), Iran (Present study).

Iran. Hormozgan Province: Qeshm I. (two stations along the south coast), Moghdan (Parsian).

General distribution. Indo-West Pacific: East Africa, Red Sea, southern Oman (Dhofar), Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Pakistan, Andaman, Sea, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Japan, Indonesia, Christmas I., Australia (Western Australia, Queensland, NSW, Southern Austrlia), Fiji, Hawaiian Is.

Habitat. Rocky intertidal.

Remarks. Schizophrys aspera has been first recorded by Nobili (1906a) from the Persian Gulf in the UAE. Tirmizi & Kazmi (1995) described a new species of the genus, Schizophrys pakistanensis , from the Pakistan waters, which is very similar to S. aspera . Apel (2001) collected S. pakistanensis from the Saudi Arabian coast and discussed that more probably the record of S. aspera by Basson et al. (1977) from Saudi Arabia could be assigned to S. pakistanensis . We did not collect S. pakistanensis during the present study, whereas the record of S. aspera is new to the Iranian coast.