An Annotated Checklist and Key to Hermit Crabs of Tampa Bay, Florida, and Surrounding Waters

Abstract

Fourteen species of hermit crabs, belonging to 5 genera, were identified from 35 stations in Tampa Bay and adjacent continental shelf waters. Ninety-two samples were taken from the intertidal zone to 15 m with a variety of gear including dip nets, trawls, dredges, and hand collections using SCUBA. Pagurus maclaughlinae, Pagurus longicarpus, and Pagurus pollicaris were distributed throughout the bay. These species were often sympatric, and were commonly found in seagrass beds, sandy substrates, and sand/mud substrates, respectively. Clibanarius vittatus, Pagurusgymnodactylus, and Pagurus stimpsoni inhabited the higher salinity waters of the bay entrance. Paguristes sp., Paguristes hummi, Pagurus impressus and Petrochirus diogenes were collected from the lower bay to offshore on hard substrates and sand. Paguristes puncticeps, Paguristes sericeus and Pagurus carolinensis were collected only offshore on hard substrates. The latter species is reported from the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. Isocheles wurdemanni appears to be restricted to high energy beaches. An illustrated key as well as information on distribution, reproductive biology, taxonomic problems, symbionts, and coloration are presented.

Molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Paguristes tortugae Schmitt, 1933 complex and selected other Paguroidea (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura)

“…1). Well prior to present genetic evidence for this new species, freshly collected specimens could be designated as one of two distinct color forms that were otherwise both assignable to P. tortugae by diagnostic morphology (Provenzano 1959(Provenzano , 1965Williams 1965;McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974;Strasser & Price 1999). In the description of P. tortugae little mention was made of color (Schmitt 1933), and subsequent descriptions of preserved P. tortugae specimens described them as "colorless" (Holthuis 1959), "whitish" (Provenzano 1959, Williams 1965), or "straw colored" (McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974).…”

“…Taxon sampling was biased to western Atlantic representatives of the genus Paguristes with a specific focus on specimens assignable to the P. tortugae complex. Species identifications for specimens included in the analysis were determined from literature accounts related to the complex reports of the Gulf of Mexico fauna (Provenzano 1959(Provenzano , 1965Felder 1973;McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974;Abele & Kim 1986;Strasser & Price 1999;Felder et al 2009a). A color photograph database assembled by one of us (DLF) was consulted to identify color variants, and ethanol-preserved voucher specimens for these photographs were integrated into the analyses as possible.…”

“…In the P. tortugae complex, some constituent species show well-defined and markedly different color schemes with little intraspecific variation or sexual dimorphism (McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974). Key literature (Provenzano 1959;McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974;Strasser & Price 1999), and extensive photographic evidence compiled by us document variation in color among individuals otherwise assignable by current definition as P. tortugae. Although these differences have long been observed, they have historically been regarded as ecomorphic variations of the phenotype closely tied to habitat substrate color (McLaughlin & Provenzano 1974), which could indeed apply to some paguroid taxa (Mandai et al 2018).…”

New taxonomic and distributional information on hermit crabs (Crustacea: Anomura: Paguroidea) from the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and Atlantic coast of South America

“…Following the clarification of the identity of this species by McLaughlin (1975), Pagurus brevidactylus has been reported broadly in the western Atlantic, from Bermuda to Brazil (e.g., Sánchez & Campos 1978;Lemaitre et al 1982;Abele & Kim 1986;Sterrer 1986;Strasser & Price 1999;Hernández et al 2007;Felder et al 2009;Nucci et al 2007). Currently, this abundant species is considered to exhibit significant morphological variations , including various color patterns that deviate from the documented coloration provided by Provenzano (1959) and McLaughlin (1975), and conceivably reflect cryptic species confused under this name (D.L.…”

“…Various faunistic inventories have included summaries of western Atlantic paguroids, often adding new species from the Gulf of Mexico (Felder 1973;Hernández Aguilera et al 1996;Raz-Guzmán et al 1986Felder et al 2009), east and west coasts of Florida (Abele 1986;Strasser & Price 1999), Bermuda (Chace et al 1986), Cuba (Gómez Hernández & Pérez 1984;Gómez Hernández & Martínez-Iglesias 1986;Hernández-Ávila et al 2007), Caribbean coast of Colombia (Sánchez & Campos 1978;Campos et al 2005;Martínez Campos et al 2012) and Venezuela (Rodríguez 1980), Suriname (Holthuis 1959), Brazil (Forest & de Saint Laurent 1968;Fausto-Filho 1970aCoelho & Ramos 1973;Coelho & Santos 1980;Coelho & Ramos-Porto 1986;Hebling & Rieger 1986;Coelho-Santos & Coelho 1995;Calado 1996;Rieger 1997Rieger , 1998Rieger , 1999Melo 1999;Almeida et al 2006Almeida et al , 2010Coelho et al 2007;Nucci & Melo 2011), Uruguay (Barattini & Ureta 1960;de Zolesi & Philippi 1995), and Argentina (Scelzo & Boschi 1973). A good number of studies have also been published in the last 65 years exclusively describing or providing updated taxonomic and distributional data for one or more new or previously poorly known species from the western Atlantic (Forest 1954(Forest , 1964…”