“They’re claws!”
Geosesarma hagen is a new species dubbed a “vampire crab” in a new paper by Ng and colleagues (2015), and you can see why.
This interesting paper has details even more new and very colourful crab species. Another one is cream and bright violet. Several of these species were showing up in the pet trade well before this paper appeared, with completely unknown provenance. It’s a little scary to see how often collectors start pushing things into the pet trade even before we have a decent species description.
Another notable thing in the species names is that the crab Geosesarma dennerle, which the authors write:
The new species is named after the German company Dennerle, who kindly supported the third author’s study in Java.
It’s sort of weird, because first, it’s an aquarium company. This would seem to be a potential conflict of interest, which isn’t declared. Second, this funding source isn’t acknowledged anywhere in the acknowledgements at the end, which is the normal place you’d look for something like this.
Related posts
Tuesday crustie: I vant a cape!
Reference
Ng PKL, Schubart CD & Lukhaup C. 2015. New species of “vampire crabs” (Geosesarma De Man, 1892) from central Java, Indonesia, and the identity of Sesarma (Geosesarma) nodulifera De Man, 1892 (Crustacea, Brachyura, Thoracotremata, Sesarmidae). Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 63: 3-13. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:9F76CF88-A3DD-4F0E-B348-EEB9558DBBC4
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