| Abstract |
Diversity of infaunal crustaceans remains poorly known, even for macrofaunal forms from accessible shorelines that have been urbanized for decades and studied extensively.Neocallichirus cacahuate, new species, is described from sparsely vegetated intertidal flats of Peanut Island just inside Lake Worth Inlet on the Atlantic coast of Florida, where it occurs as a minor constituent of a thalassinid fauna dominated by the callianassids Neocallichirus rathbunae(Schmitt), Sergio mericeae Manning & Felder, and Callichirus major (Say).This new species, at first confused with Neocallichirus grandimana (Gibbes) which also occurs occasionly in this habitat, bears a general resemblance to the young of that larger congener in carapacial features, chelae, telson, and uropods.However, in addition to the much larger body size attained by N.grandimana, this species and N.cacahuate can be distinguished on the basis of differences in body coloration, eyes, proportions of cheliped articles, shape of the uropodal endopods, and sculpture of the first and second male pleopods.At present known from only four small specimens, all from the type locality, N.cacahuate appears to mature at a much smaller size than does N.grandimana. |
