Freshwater Crabs of the
genus Sundathelphusa are found in the Philippines, Sulawesi,
Borneo and the Lesser Sunda Islands. To date thirty-three species
have been described, though only two of these came from Borneo,
Sundathelphusa tenebrosa, from northern Sarawak and Brunei,
and Sundathelphusa aspera from northwestern Sabah.
In a paper published in
the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology on 23 October 2015, Peter Ng of the
Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at the National University of
Singapore, described a third Sundathelphusa species from
Borneo.
The new species is named
Sundathelphusa brachyphallus, in reference to the G1 segment
of the abdomen (the tip of the tail of the crab, though this is
folded under the body and invisible to a casual observer), which is
short, stout and directed obliquely outwards. The species is
described from two male specimens, one 27.1 mm in width the other
29.3 mm, collected at Liang Hintan in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).
Sundathelphusa
brachyphallus, male specimen in dorsal view. Ng (2015).
Ng notes that the three
Bornean (check spelling) species of Sundathelphusa differ from
other members of the genus in a number of ways, including a generally
more flattened body and the structure of the abdomen. He suggests
that these species may in the future be separated out to form a new
genus.
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