Abstract:

The paper presents the list of coastal estuarine crabs occurring in estuaries of rivers flowing into the southern part of the Okhotsk Sea and Russian coasts of the Sea of Japan. At the moment the list includes five species: Hemigrapsus penicillatus (de Haan, 1835) (Varunidae) (first satisfied record for the Russian fauna), Hemigrapsus takanoi Asakura and Watanabe, 2005 (Varunidae), Eriocheir japonica (de Haan, 1835) (Varunidae), Helice tridens (de Haan, 1835) (Varunidae) (recorded as extinct species for the area) and Deiratonotus cristatum (de Man, 1895) (Camptandriidae). Two species, H. takanoi and E. japonica, are widespread along the Russian coast of the Sea of Japan and in the southern part of the Okhotsk Sea. Helice tridens previously recorded the region by the literature as “widespread” is probably presently extinct in the studied area as not recorded since 2000-ies. Two remaining species, D. cristatum and H. penicillatus, are marked as restricted-range species: three populations of D. cristatum are known from the estuary of Amur river, the Nevelskiy Strait (the most northern part of the Sea of Japan) and the Salmon Bay of Sakhalin Island (southern part of Okhotsk Sea) respectively whereas the only confirmed habitat of H. penicillatus in the Russian fauna is the estuary Volchanka River in Vostok Bay of the Sea of Japan. Presented records are the most northern known populations of all listed species while the areas of their distribution of them are mostly located in a subtropical region of the Sea of Japan and east coast of the Korean Peninsula south to tropical waters. The paper describes the morphology, coloration, features of ecology and distribution of all estuarine crab species on the territory of Russia and adjacent areas.

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