Austruca iranica ( Pretzmann, 1971 )

Shih, Hsi-Te, Prema, Mani, Kumar, Austin Anand Jeya, Saher, Noor Us, Ravichandran, Samuthirapandian, Odhano, Sahir & Paulay, Gustav, 2022, Fig. 9 in Fig. 1 in Fig. 20. A-E in Establishment of A New Bornean Genus of Gecarcinucidae (Crustacea: Brachyura), with Descriptions of Five New Species., Zoological Studies 61 (65), pp. 1-18 : 6

Austruca iranica ( Pretzmann, 1971) ( Fig. 2E, F )

Gelasimus lacteus – Alcock, 1900: 355.

Uca annulipes – Stephensen 1946: 189; Pretzmann 1971: 481; Al-Ghais and Cooper 1996: 419, figs. 7, 8; Hornby 1997: 14 [part?]; Tirmizi and Ghani 1996: 105 [part; not fig. 40]; Mokhlesi et al. 2011: 245.

Uca annulipes iranica Pretzmann 1971: 481 , pl. 5, figs. 11, 12 (type locality: Bandar-Abbas, Iran).

Uca (Celuca) lactea annulipes – Crane 1975: 298, 611 [part].

Uca annulipes iranica – Apel and Türkay 1999: 133.

Uca iranica – Shih et al. 2009: 376; Naderloo et al. 2013: 450; Shih et al. 2013: 643.

Uca (Austruca) iranica – Naderloo et al. 2010: 14, figs. 6c–f, 7a, 8a, 9a–k; Naderloo and Türkay 2012: 54; Saher et al. 2014: 669, figs. 1–4; Naderloo et al. 2015: 409.

Austruca iranica – Shih et al. 2016: 153, 168, fig 8C; Naderloo 2017: 413, figs. 37.11, 37.13b; Trivedi and Vachhrajani 2017: 82, figs. 4, 5; Trivedi et al. 2018: 54; Beleem et al. 2019: 15; Sasaki 2019: 12429; Pati et al. 2022: 527.

Austruca (Austruca) iranica – Rosenberg 2019: 734.

Material examined: Oman: 1 ò (13.8 mm) ( UF 7791), Bar Al Hikman Peninsula, coll. V. Bonito and G. Paulay, 22–24 Jan. 2005; 1 ñ (10.8 mm) ( UF 7752), Bar Al Hikman Peninsula, coll. V. Bonito et al., 24 Jan. 2005. Iran: 1 ò (16.4 mm) (NCHUZOOL 15090), Qeshm I., Hormozgan Prov., coll. Jun. 2008; 2 òò (12.4, 14.0 mm), 1 ñ (13.8 mm) (NCHUZOOL 13245), 1 ovig. ñ (12.1 mm) (NCHUZOOL 13247), Gavbandi, Hormozgan, coll. E. Kamrani, Jul. 2008; 3 òò (13.4–16.4 mm) (NCHUZOOL 13248), 1 ñ (11.0 mm) (NCHUZOOL 13246), Qeshm I., Hormozgan Prov., coll. E. Kamrani, Jul. 2008; 6 òò (12.8–15.7 mm), 2 ññ (12.4, 13.9 mm) (NCHUZOOL 15089), Dokohak, Qeshm I, Hormozgan Prov., coll. E. Kamrani, 23 Jan. 2013. Pakistan: 1 ò (18.7 mm), 1 ñ (15.2 mm) (NCHUZOOL 15091), Sandspit, Karachi, Sindh, coll. 6 Mar. 2013.

Distribution: Oman, Iran, Pakistan and northwestern India.

Remarks: Although A. iranica was thought to be restricted to the Arabian/Persian Gulf ( Shih et al. 2009), this is unlikely as the Gulf is young and was dry land during the last glacial maximum at 18,000 year BP ( Lambeck 1996). Later studies showed its distribution extended eastward to the Gulf of Oman, Pakistan and northwestern India ( Naderloo et al. 2010; Saher et al. 2014; Naderloo 2017; Trivedi and Vachhrajani 2017). Here we record this species from the Arabian Sea coast of Oman, a new western distributional limit, where it co-occurs in the same coastal mangrove with A. albimana . COI sequence data shows good connectivity across the distribution of the species ( Fig. 4 ).

Figures

Fig. 2. Dorsal view of carapace and frontal view of major cheliped. Austruca albimana (A, B, NCHUZOOL 13242, CW 15.2 mm, Egypt); A. annulipes (C, NCHUZOOL 13642, CW 17.4 mm, Pakistan; D, NCHUZOOL 15088, CW 19.4 mm, Pakistan); A. iranica (E, F, NCHUZOOL 15090, CW 16.4 mm, Iran); A. sindensis (G, H, NCHUZOOL 13642, CW 17.4 mm, Pakistan).

Fig. 4. COI neighbor-joining tree for fiddler crabs studied, with bootstrap support values (only> 50% shown).