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Email the author (Login required) Estuarine and marine brachyuran crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) from Bahia, Brazil: checklist and zoogeographical considerations
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3856/vol36-issue2-fulltext-4
Abstract
The coast of the state of Bahia in eastern Brazil comprises more than 12% of the entire Brazilian coast. However, the crustacean fauna of this area still remains poorly known, especially the shallow-water fauna. We provide here a list of 162 brachyuran crustaceans known for the Bahia coast, based on published records as well as material deposited in the Carcinological Collection of the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Bahia. The list includes estuarine and marine species (from coastal beaches to the continental shelf and slope) that have been reported at least once in the study area. Regarding longitudinal distribution patterns, five species are circum-tropical, nine are amphi-Atlantic, and two are amphi-American. The portunid Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867) is an introduced Indo-West Pacific species. The remaining 145 species are native to the western Atlantic; 17 of these are endemic to Brazil. A total of 46 species (28.4%) have the southernmost limit of their known ranges in the western Atlantic between Bahia and the state of Rio de Janeiro, which suggests, for this group, the existence of a wide transition area between the Brazilian and Paulista zoogeographic provinces. Finally, two small range extensions in the western Atlantic are reported: the hymenosomatid Elamena gordonae Monod, 1956 from Camamu Bay (13°54’14”S) to Nova Viçosa (17°53’00.9”S), and the sesarmid Sesarma curacaoense De Man, 1892 from Ilhéus (15°04’58.6”S) to Mucuri (18°05’38’S).
