First record of the invasive swimming crab Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne Edwards, 1867) (Crustacea, Portunidae) off Martinique, French Lesser Antilles

Romain Ferry,Yan Buske,Juliette Smith-Ravin,Joseph Poupin

doi:10.3391/bir.2017.6.3.09

Romain Ferry, Yan Buske + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2017.6.3.09

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Journal: BioInvasions Records	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
Citations: 10	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: University of the French Antilles

Abstract

First record of the invasive swimming crab Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne Edwards, 1867) (Crustacea, Portunidae) off Martinique, French Lesser Antilles

Highlights

The swimming crab (Crustacea, Portunidae) Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867) was described from New Caledonia and later was reported in the Indo-West Pacific from South Africa/Madagascar to Japan/Hawaii (Edmonson 1954; Crosnier 1962; Stephenson 1972; Kensley 1981; Wee and Ng 1995)
C. hellerii has since been collected in North Carolina (Fofonoff et al 2016), Florida (Lemaitre 1995), Cuba (Gómez and Martínez-Iglesias 1990), Belize (Felder et al 2010), Colombia (Campos and Türkay 1989), Venezuela (Bolaños et al 2012), French Guyana (Tavares and Amouroux 2003), and Brazil (Tavares and Mendonça 1996; Mantelatto and Dias 1999; Boos et al 2010; Sant’Anna et al 2012)
We report selected aspects of the biology of C. helleri; including: sex ratio, description of habitats occupied, abundance, size, and behavior

Summary

Introduction

The swimming crab (Crustacea, Portunidae) Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867) was described from New Caledonia and later was reported in the Indo-West Pacific from South Africa/Madagascar to Japan/Hawaii (Edmonson 1954; Crosnier 1962; Stephenson 1972; Kensley 1981; Wee and Ng 1995). Milne-Edwards, 1867) was described from New Caledonia and later was reported in the Indo-West Pacific from South Africa/Madagascar to Japan/Hawaii (Edmonson 1954; Crosnier 1962; Stephenson 1972; Kensley 1981; Wee and Ng 1995) It was first detected in the Mediterranean Sea in 1929, presumably invading through the Suez Canal (Steinitz 1929; Galil 1992; Yokes et al 2007). Fofonoff et al (2016) provide a detailed invasion history of C. hellerii in the western Atlantic as does The Global Invasive Species Database (GISD 2009). While this invasive species is widely spread in Mediterranean Sea and western Atlantic Ocean, it has yet to be recorded from the eastern Atlantic Ocean (Udekem d’Acoz 1999)

Methods

Results

Conclusion