Myra australis Haswell, 1880

Manikandan, K, Megalaa, N, Valliappan, Subramanian, Nandini, K, Rani, Lourdu V, Dakshinamurthi, Senthil & Nagappan, Nagappan, 2022, Crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda) from the Seas of East and Southeast Asia Collected by the RV Hakuhō Maru (KH- 72 - 1 Cruise) 3. Sahul Shelf, Bulletin of the National Museum of Nature and Science. Series A, Zoology 48 (2), pp. 35-83 : 44

Myra australis Haswell, 1880

( Fig. 1E )

Material examined. RV Hakuhō Maru KH-72-1 cruise, sta. 29, 1♀ ( CB 9.7×CL 11.1 mm including posterior tubercle), NSMT-Cr 30703.

Remarks. The present female ( Fig. 1E ) of Myra australis is somewhat young, with all the ambulatory legs detached and the left cheliped missing. The carapace dorsal surface and lateral margins are covered and fringed with granules, differing from the adult type specimens described by Galil (2001) in having the rather short median posterior spine, but agreeing well with the young specimen recorded by Galil and Ng (2007). This species is distinguished from some close congeners such as Myra fugax ( Fabricius, 1798) , M. celeris Galil, 2001 , and M. subgranulata Kossmann, 1877 , which were studied in detail by Galil (2001), by the greatly swollen proximal part of the median posterior spine. According to Galil (2001), the G1s of these species are different from each other in the apical process. Otherwise, the figures by the original author ( Haswell, 1880a), Tyndale-Biscoe and George (1962), and Campbell and Stephenson (1970) are useful for definitive identification.

Distribution. Australian waters from the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia through the Torres Strait and its surrounding sea to Moreton Bay, Queensland, 5–57 m depth, and additionally from New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Indonesia and the Philippines, 35–240 m depth. The deeper records of more than 300 m by tangle net fisheries operated in the Philippines are not always reliable.

Figures

Fig. 1.ɹA–C: Cryptodromia amboinensis De Man, ♀ (NSMT-Cr 30697; CB 4.5×CL 4.2mm) from sta. 29. Dorsal (A), frontal (B) and frontal upper (C) views. D: Urnalana whitei (Bell), ♂ (NSMT-Cr 30704; CB 6.6×CL 7.2mm) from sta. 29. E: Myra australis Haswell, ♀ (NSMT-Cr 30703; CB 9.7×CL 11.1mm including posterior tubercle) from sta. 29. F: Drachiella morum (Alcock), ♀ (NSMT-Cr 30701; CB 8.0×CL 7.0mm) from sta. 29.