Relevant Synonyms Plagusia tuberculata Lamarck, 1818 Plagusia depressa tuberculata Shiber, 1981 Misidentification -  drawing : Tuvia Kurz

SHORT DESCRIPTION Carapace subcircular, depressed, regions well defined, dorsally covered with squamiform, granular tubercles. Front broad, bilobed, deeply cleft by antennulary notches, postfrontal ridge with pair of prominences. Orbit deep, internal hiatus large, eye-stalk short, robust. Basal antennal article dilated. Antero-lateral margins quadridentate, teeth decreasing in size posteriorly. Chelipeds subequal, sexually dimorphic, robust in male, slender in female; merus bearing squamiform rugae on outer surface, carpus finely grooved, granulate; fingers stout, distally spoon-shaped. Walking legs large, robust, rugose, with furry grooves; third leg longest; dactyl with two rows of spinules ventrally. First male pleopod stout, distally rounded, chitinous process bidentate, setose. color : carapace greenish-grey speckled with blue medially, median frontal teeth light blue, pereopodal meri reddish-brown speckled with grey, propodi ringed with yellow on proximal, distal margins. common size : CL male 4.5 cm. DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS Carapace squamose; antennulary fossets deeply notched; chela small; walking legs robust, long. BIOLOGY / ECOLOGY Poorly known. habitat : intertidal, among stones, corals, known to attach itself to floating timber and the hulls of ships (Dawson, 1987).

1st MEDITERRANEAN RECORD Lebanon, 1981. DISTRIBUTION Worldwide : Indo-West Pacific origin. Mediterranean : a single record from Lebanon (Shiber, 1981). Successively recorded in Libya, Tripoli (Zaouali et al., 2007 [2006]); Tunisia, Zarzis (Zaouali et al., 2007 [2006]). ESTABLISHMENT SUCCESS Known from a single record. speculated reasons for success : - MODE OF INTRODUCTION As fouling organism, possibly via the Suez Canal. IMPORTANCE TO HUMANS None.

KEY REFERENCES Crosnier A., 1965. Crustacés Décapodes, Grapsidae et Ocypodidae. Faune de Madagascar, 18: 1-143. Dawson E. W., 1987. A key to the world species of Plagusia (Crustacea: Brachyura), with a new record of P. depressa tuberculata Lamarck from New Zealand. National Museum of New Zealand Records, 3(4): 37-45. Schubart, C.D. and P.K.L. Ng, 2000. On the identities of the rafting crabs Cancer depressus Fabricius, 1775, Cancer squamosus Herbst, 1790, Plagusia immaculata Lamarck, 1818, and Plagusia tuberculata Lamarck, 1818 (Crustacea: Decapoda: Brachyura: Plagusiidae). The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 48(2): 327-336. Shiber J. G., 1981. Brachyurans from Lebanese waters. Bulletin of Marine Science, 31(4): 864-875. Steinitz W., 1967. A tentative list of immigrants via the Suez Canal. Israel Journal of Zoology, 16: 166-169. Zaouali J., Ben Souissi J., Galil B.S., d'Udekem d'Acoz C. and Ben Abdallah A., 2007. Grapsoid crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) new to the Sirte Basin, southern Mediterranean Sea - the roles of vessel traffic and climate change. JMBA2, 5770: 4 p. FEEDBACK / COMMENTS TO AUTHORS

Last update of the species sheet: 2009 ©ciesm 2002