Buergeres ortmanni ( Bürger, 1895 )

Ahyong, Shane T. & Ng, Peter K. L., 2020, New species of pinnotherid crabs from Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea (Crustacea: Decapoda: Brachyura), Zootaxa 4816 (3), pp. 333-349 : 340-341

Buergeres ortmanni ( Bürger, 1895)

Pinnotheres ortmanni Bürger, 1895: 384–385 , pl. 9 fig. 30, pl. 10 fig. 28.— Schmitt et al. 1973: 61.

Pinnotheres tenuipes Bürger, 1895: 371–372 , pl. 9 fig. 11, pl. 10 fig. 11.— Schmitt et al. 1973: 89. —Ng & Manning 1998: 902. [New synonymy].

Buergeres ortmanni .—Ng & Manning 1998: 910, 911–912, fig. 4.—Ahyong & Ng 2007: 210, fig. 16, tab. 2.— Ng et al. 2008: 248.

Buergeres tenuipes .—Ng & Manning 1998: 910, 911.—Ahyong & Ng 2007: 210, fig. 3B, tab. 2.— Ng et al. 2008: 248.

Type material. NEOTYPE: ZRC 2003.59 , female (cl 9.5 mm, cw 11.4 mm), Pulau Salu , northeastern Singapore, coral reef, exposed at edge of reef, in holothurian, coll. R. U. Gooding, 28 April 1967 (neotype of Pinnotheres ortmanni Bürger, 1895 ).

Other material examined. ZRC 1965.11.24.14–15, 2 females (both with cl 11.8 mm, cw 12.5 mm), Singapore, no other data; ZRC 2018.0760, 2 females (cl 11.7 mm, cw 12.3 mm; cl 9.0 mm, cw 10.3 mm), Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia, inside sea cucumbers, probably Holothuria scabra Jaeger, 1833 (Holothuriidae) , Ambon Marine Laboratory, coll. S. Dwiono, November 1996.

Remarks. Of the four species originally placed in Buergeres by Ng & Manning (2003), three were described from the Philippines ( Pinnotheres holothuriae Semper, 1880 , P. ortmanni Bürger, 1895 (type species) and P. tenuipes Bürger, 1895 ) and one from eastern India ( P. deccanensis Chopra, 1931 ). Most species of Buergeres have been well characterised: Chopra (1931) provided a good description and figures of B. deccanensis and Ng & Manning (2003) redescribed B. holothuriae based on type material. The original type specimens of two Philippine species, B. ortmanni and B. tenuipes are lost. As such, Ng & Manning (2003) redescribed B. ortmanni based on a neotype and other material from Singapore. Buergeres tenuipes , however, has not been reported since it was first described, but the present reconsideration of the elementary original description and figures shows that it cannot be distinguished from B. ortmanni . Although the original holotype of B. tenuipes was about half the size of B. ortmanni , the two species share the same diagnostic features and are herein synonymized. Unfortunately, no Philippine material clearly identifiable with B. ortmanni or B. tenuipes is presently available (but see Remarks for Burgeres sp.). Therefore, to stabilize the taxonomy of B. tenuipes as a junior synonym of B. ortmanni , we herein designate the neotype of the latter (female, ZRC 2003.59) as the simultaneous neotype of B. tenuipes , rendering the two species objective synonyms of each other. As both species were described in the same paper ( Bürger 1895), we here also select B. ortmanni to have priority over B. tenuipes .

Distribution. The Philippines, Singapore and now from Ambon, Indonesia.