Study On The Taxonomy And Zoogeography Of Family Porcellanidae (Crustacea:Decapoda: Anomura: Galatheoidea) From Chinese Waters

The Anomuran crustacean family Porcellanidae, known as porcelain crabs, is widely distributed in the world, except the Polar Regions. It is reported with remarkably high biomass, diversity, and abundant in symbiotic species in the tropical and subtropical seas, and regarded as one of ideal fauna to research for marine biodiversity appraisal. Porcelain crabs are generally living in shallow waters less than 200 meters, with various habitats, such as intertidal rocky shore, coral reefs, muddy and sandy bottoms and live in association with other marine living organisms such as sponges, sea anemones, etc. The occurrence of porcelain crabs is reported everywhere in China seas, with a few taxonomic reports from some regions. However, it is necessary for an integrated research on the taxonomy and biogeography of Porcellanidae from whole Chinese waters.The Marine Biological Museum (MBM) of Chinese Academy of Sciences has more than 1000 porcelain crab specimens, which are from numbers of national or regional marine surveys and several individual collections, since 1950's from all the Chinese waters, especially on the islands of South China Sea, such as Hainan Island, Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands.The present thesis was carried out with traditional taxonomic methods, examining all the porcelain samples deposited in MBM, as well as the samples from recent collections and loaned from international institutions or museums. Up to 62 species of 12 genera are reported here, including 7 new species, 9 species being first records from Chinese waters, 1 new combination in nomenclature, 1 synonymic name being revived into valid, and 3 species being put into junior synonymies. For each genus and species involved, detailed morphological description and drawing figures, distinguishable characters from their related taxa, as well as keys to distinguish genera and species, are provided. The habitats and geographic distributions for each species are also listed. Subsequently, the character of Chinese porcelain faunal is compared with those from adjacent waters, to provide features of biogeographic distribution, immigration and the influence facters of Porcellanidae in Chinese waters, Indo-West Pacific and the entire world.This study enriches the Chinese marine biodiversity knowledge, reviewes the porcelain reports from Chinese waters, provides basic data for subsequent research of phylogeny, ecology, marine environmental evaluation and biological resource proservation.