A new genus and species of freshwater crab is described from Madagascar. The new species is morphologically closest to the three species of the genus Foza Reed & Cumberlidge, 2006, but can easily be distinguished by having a completely smooth carapace with an unarmed anterolateral margin and a mandible with a distinctly shortened anterior lobe. This unusual suite of characters is sufficient to ...

A new species of freshwater crab of the genus Microthelphusa Pretzmann, 1968, from Guyana, South America is described. Microthelphusa meansi, new species, was collected from a remote isolated cloud forest in the Wokomung Massif, a tabletop mountain (tepui) in western Guyana at over 1,000 m above sea level. The conspicuous horseshoe-like marginal lobe and the dome-like auxiliar cephalic lobe of ...

A new species of semiterrestrial gecarcinucid freshwater crab, Terrathelphusa secula, is described from Danum Valley in Sabah, East Malaysia, eastern Borneo. In the form of its carapace, third maxilliped, and male second gonopod, it most closely resembles T. ovis Ng, 1997, and T. telur Ng, 1997, from eastern Sarawak and Brunei, respectively. It differs markedly from these and other congeners in...

A new species of freshwater crab, Kingsleya celioi, from the Brazilian Amazon (Pará State) is described and illustrated. The new species can be easily separated from their congeners by a suite of morphological characters, including the apical plate of the first gonopod large, widest medially in abdominal view, with single large spine-like outgrowth in midlength of mesial margin; distal, proxima...

Images of aquatic invertebrates are included in a late 16th-century work, Historie Naturelle des Indes, also known as The Drake Manuscript. While the renderings are often whimsical and exaggerated, they nonetheless appear to be based on direct observations. We sought to identify these aquatic invertebrates and explore their early history. Most were identifiable to species based on the rendering...

The present study identifies and quantifies appropriate sites for brackish water aquaculture development in southwestern Bangladesh using remote sensing, GPS and geographical information systems (GIS). A colour composite Landsat TM image from 1996 covering the southwestern part of Bangladesh was used to identify the extent of brackish water and to classify land use. The remotely sensed data wer...

A cytosolic manganese superoxide dismutase gene (Es-cMnSOD) was cloned from the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis, using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and the rapid amplification of cDNA ends. The open reading frame of Es-cMnSOD is 867 bp in length and encodes a 288-amino acid protein without a signal peptide. The calculated molecular mass of the translated protein of Es-...

The South African leech Marsupiobdella africana is a temporary ectoparasite of the amphibian Xenopus laevis, has a phoretic association with a freshwater crab Potamonautes perlatus, and exhibits advanced parental care by incubating its offspring in a brood pouch. Because phoretic associations are usually regarded to favor the phoront's dispersion, its occurrence within the biology of a parasiti...

The major features of the osmoregulatory mechanisms which form the basis for the unusually great salinity tolerance of the adults of the southeast Asian crab-eating frog (Rana cancrivora) have been described by Gordon, Schmidt-Nielsen & Kelly (1961) and by Schmidt-Nielsen & Lee (1962). Adults of this species respond to high external salinities with an increase in internal osmotic concentration,...