HERMIT-CRABS (CRUSTACEA DECAPODA ANOMURA) OF THE MALDIVES WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF CATAPAGURUS EDWARDS,A.MILNE 1880

In a collection of hermit crabs from supralittoral? intertidal, and su btidal areas of the Maldive archipelago (latitudes 7 degrees 0'N and 0 degrees 4'S, longitudes 72 degrees 30' and 73 degrees 40'E), 27 speci es were found, belonging to the genera Coenobita Latreille 1829 (famil y Coenobitidae), Calcinus Dana 1851, Ciliopagurus Forest 1995, Clibana rius Dana 1852, Dardanus Paul'son 1875, Diogenes Dana 1851, Paguristes Dana 1851 (family Diogenidae), and Catapagutrus A. Milne Edwards 1880 , Micropagurus McLaughlin 1986, Pagurixus Melin 1939, Pylopaguropsis A lcock 1905, and Trichopagurus de Saint Laurent 1970 (family Paguridae) . This hermit fauna was in part composed of species widely distributed within the Western Indian Ocean (12 species); seven species were prev iously known from a few localities, seven were recorded for the first time in the Western Indian Ocean, that is Calcinus guamensis Wooster 1 984, C. pulcher Forest 1958, Calcinus sp., Clibanarius boschmai Buiten dijk 1937, C. corallinus (H. Milne Edwards 1848), Micropagurus polynes iensis (Nobili 1907), and Trichopagurus trichophthalmus (Forest 1954). A new species, Catapagurus alcocki, is described and illustrated by o ne of the authors. The species composition from this archipelago is di scussed and compared with lists previously compiled for other areas of the Western Indian Ocean. As shown by a clustering technique, the Mal dives hermit crab fauna has a closer affinity with the cluster compose d by the Mascarenes, Seychelles, Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya, South Afr ica, Mozambique, and Tanzania, than the geographically closer Western India and Sri Lanka.