Pinnotheridae Temporal range: | |
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Pinnotheres pisum | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Malacostraca |
Order: | Decapoda |
Suborder: | Pleocyemata |
Infraorder: | Brachyura |
Subsection: | Thoracotremata |
Superfamily: | Pinnotheroidea |
Family: | Pinnotheridae De Haan, 1833 |
Genera | |
See text |
Pinnotheridae is a family of tiny soft-bodied crabs that live commensally in the mantles of certain bivalve molluscs and the occasional large gastropod mollusc species in genera such as Strombus and Haliotis . Tunicotheres moseri is commensal with a tunicate. [1] The earliest fossils attributable to the Pinnotheridae date from the Danian. [2]
The following genera are recognised in the family Pinnotheridae: [3]
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.
Calappa is a genus of crabs known commonly as box crabs or shame-faced crabs. The name box crab comes from their distinctly bulky carapace, and the name shame-faced is from anthropomorphising the way the crab's chelae (claws) fold up and cover its face, as if it were hiding its face in shame.
The Ocypodidae are a family of semiterrestrial crabs that includes the ghost crabs and fiddler crabs. They are found on tropical and temperate shorelines around the world.
Majidae is a family of crabs, comprising around 200 marine species inside 52 genera, with a carapace that is longer than it is broad, and which forms a point at the front. The legs can be very long in some species, leading to the name "spider crab". The exoskeleton is covered with bristles to which the crab attaches algae and other items to act as camouflage.
Maja is a genus of majid crabs erected by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1801. It includes the following extant species:
Cancridae is a family of crabs. It comprises six extant genera, and ten exclusively fossil genera, in two subfamilies:
Retroplumidae is a family of heterotrematan crabs, placed in their own (monotypic) superfamily, Retroplumoidea.
Parthenopidae is a family of crabs, placed in its own superfamily, Parthenopoidea. It comprises nearly 40 genera, divided into two subfamilies, with three genera incertae sedis:
Potamonautidae is a family of freshwater crabs endemic to Africa, including the islands of Madagascar, the Seychelles, Zanzibar, Mafia, Pemba, Bioko, São Tomé, Príncipe and Sherbro Island. It comprises 18 extant genera and 138 extant species. Fossil remains dating from the Late Miocene period have been attributed to the family Potamonautidae.
Sesarma is a genus of terrestrial crabs endemic to the Americas.
Hexapodidae is a family of crabs, the only family in the superfamily Hexapodoidea. It has traditionally been treated as a subfamily of the family Goneplacidae, and was originally described as a subfamily of Pinnotheridae. Its members can be distinguished from all other true crabs by the reduction of the thorax, such that only seven sternites are exposed, and only four pairs of pereiopods are present. Not counting the enlarged pair of claws, this leaves only six walking legs, from which the type genus Hexapus, and therefore the whole family, takes its name. Some anomuran "crabs", such as porcelain crabs and king crabs also have only four visible pairs of legs. With the exception of Stevea williamsi, from Mexico, all the extant members are found either in the Indo-Pacific oceans, or around the coast of Africa.
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.
Raymond Brendan Manning was an American carcinologist, specialising in alpha taxonomy and mantis shrimp.
Xanthias is a genus of crabs in the family Xanthidae, containing two exclusively fossil species and the following extant species:
The Panopeidae are a family containing 26 genera of morphologically similar crabs, often known as "mud crabs". Their centers of diversity are the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
Hyastenus is a genus of crabs in the family Epialtidae, subfamily Pisinae, containing the following extant species:
Euryplacidae is a family of crabs in the superfamily Goneplacoidea which contains the following genera:
Tunicotheres is a monotypic genus of crabs in the family Pinnotheridae, and Tunicotheres moseri is the only species in the genus. This crab lives commensally in the atrial chamber of a small ascidian. It is found in the tropical western Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
Alain raymondi is a species of crab in the Pinnotheridae family. It was first described in 2008 by Ahyong and Peter Ng. The species epithet, raymondi, honours Ray Manning.