Leptochryseus kuwaitense ( Jones & Clayton, 1983 )

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 : 48

Leptochryseus kuwaitense ( Jones & Clayton, 1983)

Persian Gulf. Iraq ( Ng et al. 2009), Kuwait ( Jones & Clayton 1983; Clayton 1986; Jones 1986a; Apel 2001), Iran (present study).

Iran. Bushehr Province: Bavirat, Emamzadeh Shah-Abdollah . Khuzestan Province: Butaheri, Hendijan, Mahshahr (mangroves of Majidieh Fishery Jetty).

General distribution. Endemic: Northern Persian Gulf, including Kuwait, Iran, still was not recorded from Iraq, but more likely its occurrence in Iraq will be reported in future.

Habitat. Muddy intertidal.

Remarks. Leptochryseus kuwaitense was originally described from Kuwait by Jones & Clayton (1983) and assigned to the genus Cleistostoma De Haan, 1833 . Later, Al-Khayat & Jones (1996) introduced a new monotypic genus Leptochryseus Al-Khayat & Jones,1996 , and transferred C. kuwaitense to the new genus. Ng et al. (2008) did not recognize the genus as a valid taxon and synonymized it with Cleistostoma . Recently, Ng et al. (2009) in their work on the Camptandriidae of Iraq compared L. kuwaitense with Nasima dotilliformis (two species which were originally included in Cleistostoma ) in detail. They came to the result that the two species, regarding the carapace morphology and adult sexual dimorphism, are different enough to be placed into two different genera. However, they still were not convinced in recognizing these genera as they share many important characters e.g. similar male abdomen, similar first male gonopod and relatively similar ambulatory legs. Leptochryseus kuwaitense is restricted to the northern Persian Gulf. The record of the species from western Gulf of Oman by Ismail & Ahmed (1993) is a misidentification of N. dotilliformis (see Apel 2001).