The Potamonautidae are a group of Freshwater Crabs found across Africa and its associated islands. In South Africa, this group is represented by 26 species divided into two genera, Potamonautes and Maritimonautes, although this is likely to be an underestimate, as the group is known to contain numerous cryptic species, which resemble one-another closely, but are reproductively isolated and can generally only be identified by genetic analysis. A number of these Crabs have recently been described from forests in South Africa, an environment which covers only 0.4% of the country's land area, but which is it's most biodiverse by area. The two largest remaining patches of forests in South Africa are Knysna and Amathole, the latter of which is found in the Amathole Mountain Range, part of the Great Escarpment of South Africa.
In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 4 May 2023, Nasreen Peer of the Department of Botany and Zoology at Stellenbosch University, Gavin Gouws of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Lazola Maliwa of the Albany Museum, Nigel Barker and Paul Juby of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Pretoria, and Renzo Perissinotto of the Institute for Coastal & Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University, describe a new species of Potamonautid Crab from the Hogsback and Katberg forests in the Amathole Mountains of Eastern Cape Province.
The new species is placed in the genus Potamonautes, and given the specific name amathole, in reference to the Amathole Mountains, to which the species appears to be endemic; in isiXhosa the term 'amathole' means 'calves', and is used to refer to the mountain range, the forest, and municipal district. The species is distinguished by a smooth carapace and a highly arched major claw.
Potamonautes amathole male holotype (MB-A094813) in (a) dorsal view and (b) ventral view. Peer et al. (2023).Genetically, Potamonautes amathole was found to be closely related to the small-bodied montane Freshwater Crabs of the Cape Fold Mountains in Western Cape Province (which are also associated with the Great Escarpment); it represents the first member of this group from the Eastern Cape.
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