Petrolisthes lamarckii (Leach, 1820)

(Fig. 3B)

Restricted synonymy:

Pisidia lamarckii Leach, 1820: 54 .

Petrolisthes lamarckii Stimpson, 1858: 227 .— Sarojini & Nagabhushanam, 1968: 152, pl. 1 fig. 2.— Haig, 1992: 315, fig. 11.— Hiller et al., 2010: 205, fig. 6.— Osawa & Chan, 2010: 142, fig. 109–114.— Prakash et al., 2013: 2, fig. 2B.— Trivedi & Vachhrajani, 2013: 57, fig. 4–5.—Beleem et al., 2016: 5, fig. 2d.— Beleem et al., 2017: 43.—Kumaralingam et al., 2017: 69, fig. 43.— Patel et al. 2022: 35.

Material examined. FSI/ CRUST: 232, 1 male (CL 8.2 mm, CW 8.1 mm), 1 female (CL 6.3 mm, CW 6.1 mm), 17°42.0’N, 83°24.6’E, 42–43 m, on black coral Antipathes sp., coll. K. Silambarasan, 12 June 2019 .

Distribution. Eastern African coast and Red Sea, eastward to Line and Tuamotu Islands (Osawa & Chan 2010); India (Patel et al. 2022). This is the second record of P. lamarckii in Visakhapatnam coastal waters after a gap of 50 years.

Commensalism. In the present study, Petrolisthes lamarckii was collected from soft coral Antipathes sp. off Visakhapatnam coast. Hornell (1923) recorded two porcellanid crabs Lissoporcellana quadrilobata (Miers, 1884) and Polyonyx biunguiculatus (Dana, 1852) associating with soft tree coral Dendronephthya sp. The recorded habitat of P. lamarckii is the small rocks (Hiller et al. 2010; Osawa & Chan 2010).

Remarks. The present specimens agree with description given by Osawa & Chan (2010). Our specimens have the rostrum weakly trilobite, a pair of well-developed epigastric spines, the carpus of each cheliped is armed with four teeth on the dorso-anterior margin, if which the distal-most tooth is occasionally obsolete.