The fiddler crab or calling crab can be one of the hundred species of semiterrestrial marine crabs in the family Ocypodidae. These crabs are well known for their extreme sexual dimorphism, where the male crabs have a major claw significantly larger than their minor claw, whilst females claws are both the same size. The name fiddler crab comes from the appearance of their small and large claw together, looking similar to a fiddle.
Xanthidae is a family of crabs known as gorilla crabs, mud crabs, pebble crabs or rubble crabs. Xanthid crabs are often brightly coloured and are highly poisonous, containing toxins which are not destroyed by cooking and for which no antidote is known. The toxins are similar to the tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin produced by puffer fish, and may be produced by bacteria in the genus Vibrio living in symbiosis with the crabs, mostly V. alginolyticus and V. parahaemolyticus.
Caridina is a genus of freshwater atyid shrimp. They are widely found in tropical or subtropical water in Asia, Oceania and Africa. They are filter-feeders and omnivorous scavengers. They range from 0.9 to 9.8 mm to 1.2–7.4 mm in carapace length.
Hymenosomatidae is a family of crabs with some 110 described species in 24 genera. The following genera are placed in the Hymenosomatidae:
Sand bubbler crabs are crabs of the genera Scopimera and Dotilla in the family Dotillidae. They are small crabs that live on sandy beaches in the tropical Indo-Pacific. They feed by filtering sand through their mouthparts, leaving behind balls of sand that are broken up by the incoming high tide.
Macrophthalmus is a genus of crabs which are widespread across the Indo-Pacific. It contains the following species : Species in this genus are often referred to as sentinel crabs.
Discoplax is a genus of terrestrial crabs. It is very closely related to the genus Cardisoma.
Pseudothelphusidae is a family of freshwater crabs found chiefly in mountain streams in the Neotropics. They are believed to have originated in the Greater Antilles and then crossed to Central America via a Pliocene land bridge. Some species of this family are troglobitic.
The Sesarmidae are a family of crabs, previously included in the Grapsidae by many authors. Several species, namely in Geosesarma, Metopaulias, and Sesarma, are true terrestrial crabs. They do not need to return to the sea even for breeding.
The Varunidae are a family of thoracotrematan crabs. The delimitation of this family, part of the taxonomically confusing Grapsoidea, is undergoing revision. For a long time, they were placed at the rank of subfamily in the Grapsidae, but they appear to be closest to Macropthalmus and the Mictyridae, which are usually placed in the Ocypodoidea. It may thus be better to merge the latter superfamily with the Grapsoidea, retaining the latter name as it is older.
Pilumnoidea is a superfamily of crabs, whose members were previously included in the Xanthoidea. The three families are unified by the free articulation of all the segments of the male crab's abdomen and by the form of the gonopods. The earliest fossils assigned to this group are of Eocene age.
Karstarma is a genus of karst-dwelling crabs formerly included in Sesarmoides.
Geograpsus is a genus of crabs in the family Grapsidae, containing four extant species, and one extinct species:
Glyptoxanthus is a genus of crabs in the family Xanthidae, containing eight species. It was originally erected by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1879 for six species previously placed in the genus Actaea and elsewhere. Although previously included in subfamily Euxanthinae, the genus has a quite distinct morphology from other genera in that group, and was placed in 2011 in the new, monotypic subfamily, Glyptoxanthinae by Jose Christopher Mendoza and Danièle Guinot.
Ebalia is a genus of crab in the family Leucosiidae.
Paragrapsus is a genus of crabs from South Eastern Australia, containing the following species:
Limnopilos naiyanetri, commonly referred to as the Thai micro crab or pill-box crab, is a freshwater hymenosomatid crab endemic to Thailand. Its presence has only been confirmed in the Tha Chin River. The species was described in 1991 and represents the type species of Limnopilos. The Thai micro crab was first introduced to the aquarium hobby in 2008 when it was imported to Germany by the tropical fish importer Aquarium Glaser GmbH, and has slowly grown in popularity with aquarium hobbyists. It remains a relatively rare species on the market and detailed information on the husbandry of this species is scarce.
Limnopilos is a genus of small hymenosomatid crabs endemic to Southeast Asia. The genus was described by Christina Chuang and Peter Ng in 1991, who identified the new species Limnopilos naiyanetri and distinguished it from the closely related genus Hymenicoides. Its true taxonomic classification was debated for several years, but in 2007 the discovery of a new species of crab in this genus solidified the distinction between Limnopilos and Hymenicoides. Many aspects of the genus Limnopilos are still poorly understood. Their ecology and natural history have not been studied in detail, and their reproductive cycle remains mysterious.
Aratus is a neotropical genus of tree-climbing mangrove crabs in the serarmid family. The genus was first described by Henri Milne-Edwards in 1853, by separating A. pisonii into its own monotypic genus. Aratus has a range spanning Baja California and Sonora, south to Peru along the east Pacific, and from Florida to Brazil in the west Atlantic. Though there has long been attempts to distinguish the Atlantic and Pacific populations of Aratus into separate taxa, it was not until 2014 that sufficient genetic and morphological evidence was collected for the Pacific population to be described as a distinct species.
