Decapoda - Brachyura - Gecarcinidae - Gecarcinus
| Gecarcinus lateralis Fréminville in Guérin, 1832 |
World Distribution
Chace & Hobbs (1969, Smithsonian Institution) - Western Atlantic. Bermudas and southern Florida to French Guiana (Bermudas, Green Turtle Cay, Great Abaco I., Andros I., Green Cay, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Isla Mona, Puerto Rico, Lesser Antilles (St Thomas, St Croix, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Lucia I., Barbados, La Orchila, Islas Los Roques, Bonaire, Curaçao, Aruba, Swan Is.).
n Felder et al. (2009) - Ber, E Fla–GMx, Carib–Sur, E Pac.
Toledano-Carrasco et al. (2021) - Restricted to WA, G. quadratus being the EP morph.
Environnement : Land - Substrat/Association : Soft bottom (mud or sand)
Vertical range : Land & Freshwater - Min-Max observed: 0-0 m
Lesser Antilles data
Distribution: VGI (St Thomas, St Croix), ICA (St Martin, St Barthélemy, ?St Eustatius, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Isla de Aves, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, Barbados), IOV (Blanquilla, Tortuga, Orchila, Los Roques, Bonaire, Curaçao, Aruba). Terrestrial. WA-EP (for EP distribution see note 458 in Felder et al., 2009).
Ocypoda lateralis Fréminville, 1835: 224, Guadeloupe (Marie Galante, Saintes, Désirade), Martinique.
Gecarcinus lateralis - H. Milne Edwards, 1834-1840: 27, Habite les Antilles. - Desbonne, in Desbonne & Schramm, 1867: 42, Guadeloupe [n°130 mâle, n°131 femelle (Guadeloupe)]. - Pocock, 1889: 6, Dominica. - Verrill, 1892: 353, Dominica [from Pocock, 1889, coll. Mr. Ramage]. - Rathbun, 1918: 358, St Lucia. - Rathbun, 1921: 79, Barbados [Barbados-Antigua Expedition 1918]. - Rathbun, 1924: 19, Curaçao [coll. C.J. van der Horst, 1920]. - Rathbun, 1936: 388, Bonaire, Curaçao [coll. P. Hummelinck, 1930]. - Chace & Holthuis, 1948: 26, Aves, Tortuga, Los Roques, Bonaire, Curaçao, Aruba [Coll. P.Hummelinck]. - Chace, 1956: 159, Orchila, Los Roques. - Chace & Hobbs, 1969: 198, St Thomas, St Croix, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Lucia, Barbados, Orchila, Los Roques, Bonaire, Curaçao, Aruba. - Rodríguez, 1980: 403, Isla de Aves. - Scelzo & Varela, 1988: 36, Blanquilla. - Garcia et al., 1998: 27, tab. 1, Isla de Aves [Also from literature]. - Carré, 2005: 23, Martinique. - Vaslet et al., 2013: 245, annexe 3, Guadeloupe [from Bourgeois-Lebel 1982, not seen]. - Questel, 2014: 11, St Barthélemy. - Perger & Wall, 2014: 97, Guadeloupe, Martinique. - Luque, 2017: 154, fig. 3, Guadeloupe. - Questel, 2019: 25, St Barthélemy.
Gecarcinus (Gecarcinus) lateralis - Türkay, 1970: 337, St Thomas, Guadeloupe, Dominica. - Türkay, 1973: 972, Guadeloupe, Martinique [Lectotype and paratype in MNHN, Paris].
Gecarcinus sp. - Faasse, 2016: 52, St Eustatius [Tentatively listed herein under G. ?lateralis].
Gecarcinus lateralis - Saint Martin, RNN Inventory 15/04/2012, UF32045, photo dSTM_5324 (first id. as G. ?ruricola).
- Guadeloupe, Karubenthos 2012, littoral and mangrove, det. J. Poupin, Besse - mars 2013, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6896, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6897, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6898, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6899, recorded st. GM05 (mangrove) but probably st. GM09 (land) instead from field notes; 1 male, JL346 (photo) MNHN-IU-2013-6725, 6 spp., JL347, MNHN-IU-2013-6724, st. GM07 (land); 1 male 24.4x30.2 mm, JL475 (photo), MNHN-IU-2013-4459, 1 sp. JL475 (photo), MNHN-IU-2013-4460, st. GM09 (land); 1 sp., JL720 (photo), MNHN-IU-2013-4525, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6894, 1 sp., MNHN-IU-2013-6895, st. GM16 (land); 1 sp., JL1323 (photo), MNHN-IU-2013-4526, st. GM31 (land); 1 juv., JL1489 (photo), MNHN-IU-2013-4527, st. GM37 (land).
Gecarcinus lateralis - Ng et al., 2019 (Zoosystema): 99, NEOTYPE (by present designation). — MNHN-IU-2000-3758 (= MNHN-B3758), ? 36.7 × 47.2 mm, Guadeloupe, coll. Beaupertuis. — Original label: “Gecarcinus lateralis, Fréminv., Guadeloupe, Mr Beaupertuis”. — Additional labels: “Lectotype. J.F. [J. Forest] 1.3.69”; “Gecarcinus lateralis Fréminville, Guadeloupe, M. Beaupertuis, Lectotype”; “Gecarcinus (Gecarcinus) lateralis lateralis (Fréminville, 1835), Révision M. Türkay, VI.1972”.
Gecarcinus lateralis - Guinot et al., 2018 (Zoosytema): 550, Guadeloupe, type, male 36.7 × 47.2 mm, Guadeloupe, coll. Beaupertuis, dry, MNHN-IU-2000-3758 (= MNHN-B3758) (see N. K. Ng et al. In press: fig. 2F); 1 male 42.0 × 56.0 mm, Guadeloupe, Grande Terre, Anse Vinaigri, Exp. Museum Antilles 1978, stn 13, 09.VI.1978, MNHN-IU-2017-8390 (= MNHN-B24656).
Gecarcinus lateralis - Parasram et al. (2021, Zootaxa: 466, fig. 8) - Barbados
French Guiana and surroundings areas: Guiana, Suriname, Brazil (Amapà)
Gecarcinus lateralis – Rathbun, 1918: 358, French Guiana ['Guiana' specimen in Paris Museum]. — Tricart & Foubert, 2000, tab. 1, French Guiana [List].
Distribution/Habitat – WA; Terrestrial.
Remark – This crab, very common in the Lesser Antilles (Poupin, 2018) seems to be still unreported from Brazil and is reported only once in French Guiana (WA southern limit) from a specimen examined by Rathbun (1918) in MNHN collection. It would be interesting to examine more samples from that place to confirm its presence as a label error is possible.
Comment(s) on data
Land crabs found at higher elevations than Cardisoma. This species eaten by local at Guadeloupe. Chace & Hobbs (1969: 45) have this comment for Dominica "Both G. lateralis and G. ruricola seem definitely to be preferred to Cardisoma guanhami and apparently are more widely available than the latter"
See Low et al. (2013, Zootaxa) for authorship of this species to Guérin (1832)
Distribution in Felder et al. (2009) - Ber, E Fla–GMx, Carib–Sur, E Pac. But with this remark, n°458, Gecarcinus quadratus de Saussure, 1853, long reported from both Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the Americas, was treated as a subspecies of G. lateralis by Türkay (1970), but as a junior synonym of it by Türkay (1973); some populations in the southwestern GMx, sympatric with populations of G. lateralis, sensu stricto, in that region, are apparently assignable to this form (Türkay 1970), which continues to be treated as a separate species by a number of workers; with synonymy of these 2 species, distribution records are combined, and the G. lateralis is regarded to range widely on American shores in the eastern Pacific, as well as widely within the western Atlantic (Hartnoll 1988).
References : PDF list, 214 pp (1.4 Mo)This species in Worms Database