Extension of Range for Two Indo-West-Pacific Spider Crabs (Decapoda, Majidae)

Abstract

While the brachyuran faunas of some oceanic Pacific islands have recently been extensively treated, those of the south west Pacific have not received much attention over the last 50 years. From the work of C. H. Edmondson on the Hawaiian fauna and of Forest & Guinot (1962) on the fauna of the Society and Tuamotu Archipelagoes it can be seen that the bulk of the faunas of these islands is made up of very widely distributed tropical species. Chilton (1911) reviewing the Crustacea of the Kermadec Islands (roughly 500 miles north east of New Zealand) listed 26 species of crabs while Whitelegge (in Etheridge, 1889) in treating the Crustacea of Lord Howe Island (450 miles north east of Sydney) lists 28 species. It is obvious that both the Kermadecs and Lord Howe also contain large numbers of widely distributed species. At the present time collections of Brachyura from Lord Howe are accumulating in the Australian Museum, Sydney (Dr. J. C. Yaldwyn, pers. comm.), while the Dominion Museum, Wellington, possesses a large collection of crabs from the Kermadecs, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands (Dr. R. K. Dell, pers. comm.). Many more species can be expected to be added to the fauna of this region when these collections are worked up, since a great many widely distributed species are not yet recorded from there. While working through the collections of the Dominion Museum recently Yald wyn came across two spider crabs belonging to the family Majidae. These speci mens, obtained by R. S. Bell and belonging to the W. R. B. Oliver collections, were collected in the early years of this century on the Kermadecs and Lord Howe. It is now possible to add a previously unrecorded species to the faunal lists of each of these islands. The two species are Schizophrys ?spera (H. Milne Edwards, 1834) (male, carapace length 60.5 mm, Lord Howe Island, received 6 August 1915) and Leptomithrax (Austromithrax) mortenseni Bennett, 1964 (male, carapace length