Porcelain crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura) of western coast of India

Abstract

Background: Significant works have been done on the diversity and distribution of porcellanids crabs in Indian coasts. The present work reports and describe porcelain crabs from the western coast of India. Result: Five species of porcelain crabs in three genera are reported from the western coast of India. Morphological descriptions with measurement of the reported species with key characters and distribution status are given. Conclusion: Petrolisthes boscii (Audouin, 1826), P. lamarckii (Leach, 1820), and P. rufescens (Heller, 1861) are commonly distributed along the studied coast. Enosteoides ornatus (Stimpson, 1858) and Pachycheles tomentosus (Henderson, 1893) sparsely occur and are firstly reported from the Gujarat coast.