FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 72, NO. 3 



certain of de Geer's figures can be interpreted as 

 Callinectes, Holthuis's conclusion seems reason- 

 able. 



Bosc (1802) gave a thumbnail natural history 

 sketch for C. sapidus in South Carolina comparing 

 crudely in its accuracy with some modern ac- 

 counts, but he used the name Portunus hastatus 

 along with a description taken from J. C. Fab- 

 ricius which applied to a European species. 



Thomas Say (1817) was the first naturalist to 

 give a description of the common blue crab of the 

 eastern United States, calling it Lupa hastata, in 

 what he intended as a redescription of Lupa has- 

 tata (Linn.), a species known from the Mediterra- 

 nean (Rathbun, 1896). 



A few years later Latreille ( 1825) gave the name 

 Portunus diacantha to the common blue crab of 

 eastern United States accompanied by a poor de- 

 scription that applied to more than one species. 

 Say and Latreille, plus perhaps De Kay (1844) 

 who published a description and beautifully col- 

 ored plate of what he called Lupa dicantha [ = 

 C. sapidus] from New York, account for the main 

 early treatments of Callinectes by naturalists. 



Search of newspaper and popular journal files 

 could yield a harvest of fact and fiction about these 

 crabs culminating perhaps in accounts of the "crab 

 derbies" held in recent years to promote market- 

 ing in crab producing states of the eastern sea- 

 board of the United States. Crab stories abound 

 and crab fishing techniques are similar in all 

 countries where Callinectes occurs. It is not sur- 

 prising, therefore, that this profusion has carried 

 over into the scientific literature where scholars 

 have bequeathed a complex nomenclature in 

 numerous contributions. 



Scholarly systematic work on the whole genus 

 was last presented by Rathbun in 1896 as a gen- 

 eral revision and amended in 1897. There is no 

 need to clutter the text here by recalling the 

 parade of specific epithets employed in the game of 

 taxonomic musical chairs played by a succession 

 of authors. Each built on the foundation of previ- 

 ous work, usually as collections substantially in- 

 creased in museums, but many minor papers were 

 reports on expeditions extending the bounds of 

 known geographic ranges for certain species. De- 

 tails of these histories may be followed in the 

 synonymies, but the principal studies should be 

 placed in perspective as an introduction, and in 

 reviewing them I repeat part of Rathbun's (1896) 

 review. 



William Stimpson (1860) created the genus CaZ- 



linectes to contain portunids in which the males 

 have a T-shaped abdomen and the merus of the 

 outer maxillipeds is short, sharply prominent, and 

 curved outward at its antero-external angle. 

 He regarded as one species "the common Amer- 

 ican Lupa diacantha (Latreille)" in his new 

 genus, and doubtfully distinguished a second, 

 L. (= Callinectes) bellicosa, which he had de- 

 scribed (1859) from the Gulf of California. We now 

 know that the second of Stimpson's generic 

 characters is nearly valueless because other por- 

 tunids have similar third maxillipeds, but the 

 narrow sixth segment of the T-shaped abdomen of 

 males holds and is reinforced by absence of an 

 internal spine on the carpus of the chelipeds in 

 Callinectes. 



The limited view of the genus held by Stimpson 

 was soon broadened by Ordway ( 1863) who recog- 

 nized nine species distinguished in part by struc- 

 ture of the male first pleopods. Ordway restricted 

 the name diacanthus to a Brazilian form described 

 by Dana (1852) which we now know as C. danae. 

 The common blue crab of the eastern United 

 States was given Say's (1817) name hastatus, 

 Stimpson's bellicosus retained, and six new 

 species named. Ordway's study of crustaceans was 

 diverted by the Civil War, and he remained in 

 military life until his death in 1897. Poor com- 

 munication may have led to Ordway's confusion in 

 nomenclature, but his concept of species based on 

 material then available was remarkably clear. 



Latreille's (lS2b) diacantha, though valid, was 

 never widely recognized because of its poor 

 definition. Various "diacanthas" were employed 

 for 139 yr finally ending in official suppression of 

 Latreille's ill-starred name in 1964 for purposes of 

 nomenclatural stability. Smith (1869) substituted 

 C. danae for Dana's Brazilian C. diacantha. 



Then followed an interval dominated by A. 

 Milne Edwards's revision of the Portunidae ( 1861 ) 

 and his review of the Crustacea of Mexico ( 1879). 

 Milne Edwards at first did not recognize Cal- 

 linectes as a distinct genus but later accepted it. 

 He conservatively viewed Callinectes species as 

 "varieties" of diacanthus (adding five new ones to 

 Ordway's nine in 1879), and the influence of his 

 ideas pervaded the field for a long time, leading 

 eventually to Rathbun's revisionary papers. 

 Milne Edwards's reasoning was not without merit 

 for the genus is close to other portunids. Indeed, its 

 validity as a distinct unit was again challenged for 

 a time by Stephenson and Campbell (1959) and 

 Stephenson (1962) during reassessment of 



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