''Nanhaipotamon macau'', the Coloane hill crab, is a species of freshwater crab found solely in twelve hill streams on the island of

Coloane Coloane (Cantonese: Lou Wan) is a former island in Macau that is united with the island of Taipa by an area of reclaimed land known as Cotai. It is located at the southern part of Macau. Administratively, the boundaries of the traditional civil pa ...

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a po ...

. A member of the genus

Nanhaipotamon ''Nanhaipotamon'' is a genus of freshwater crabs, in the subfamily Potamiscinae, found in southern China and Taiwan. As of 2018, 18 species have been described. The genus is named after the South China Sea (; literally: 'South Sea'), for it oc ...

, it was first described in December 2018 and is closely related to other land crabs such as '' Nanhaipotamon hongkongense''.

Discovery

A scientific study, commissioned by the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau of Macao and the University of New South Wales, was conducted in 2018 with the aim of surveying the freshwater crabs resident in the country of Macao and neighboring parts of China, as well as redescribing the Wuping Crab ('' Nanhaipotamon wupingense''), a closely related species of land crab whose original

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...

was lost after being described in insufficient detail. One preserved specimen thought to represent the Wuping Crab, collected in Macao in 2010, was examined in the course of this study and subsequently described as an entirely new species of crab, ''Nanhaipotamon macau'', on the basis of morphological differences between it and the Wuping Crab, which is now considered endemic to Xiaba in the province of Fujian.

Distribution

The Coloane hill crab has an extremely restricted distribution encompassing 12 hill streams on the Macanese island of Coloane, occurring across approximately 5.3 square kilometres of territory (excluding sea area) of which only 3 square kilometres are believed to be occupied by the crab. Nevertheless, although not evaluated for conservation status by the IUCN, it is not considered threatened, as it is abundant throughout its habitat, none of the streams it occupies are threatened with development, the crab is not collected for food or as an aquarium specimen, and it inhabits a protected area, specifically the Ka-Ho Reservoir Freshwater Wetland.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q63726353 Potamoidea Taxa named by Shane T. Ahyong Crustaceans described in 2018