FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 72, NO. 3 



seems entirely lacking in some Brazilian mater- 

 ial. 



This is the species that should be named 

 "latimanus" because broad, spatulate, often 

 strongly asymmetrical chelae occur on both 

 juveniles and adults. The chelipeds often seem 

 heavy for the size of the animal bearing them, but 

 pronounced asymmetry is not universally present. 

 Some individuals have both chelae basically alike 

 except for size, and in almost all except juveniles 

 the ventral side of the propodus (especially the 

 major) is decurved in a wide sweep giving em- 

 phasis to the "spatulate" character. The proximal 

 tooth on the dactyl of the major chela may be 

 moderate but is often large in size and worn as 

 shown in Figure 3a. Some juveniles with worn 

 chelae have a gape between fingers of the minor as 

 well as major chela along with development of a 

 strong proximal tooth on the dactyls. Although 

 similarity in chelae may indicate regeneration, 

 there is no evidence that replacement has occur- 

 red. 



Habitat. — Meager data recorded with speci- 

 mens suggests that this species lives in a variety of 

 shallow littoral environments probably seldom 

 exceeding 15 m (rarely to 25 m [?]) and usually 

 in much shallower water from intertidal pools to 3 

 m deep. Most specimens have been collected by 

 hand, seine, dip net, etc., from sand and mud flats, 

 algae and grass flats, sandy beaches, rocky pools, 

 eroded coral bases, oyster bars, shallows at edge of 

 mangroves, and at the surface under lights at 

 night. A number of authors (Milne Edwards and 

 Bouvier, 1900; Monod, 1956; Rossignol, 1957; 

 Forest and Guinot, 1966; Coelho, 1967a, b, 1970) 

 have noted that C. marginatus is a coastal species 

 limited to depths of a few meters, often in brackish 

 water, but rather rare and never as abundant as 

 other species of Callinectes. Capart (1951) found 

 it on shallow mud bottoms in salinities varying 

 from 7.43-14.85^0 at the surface to 19.29-32. 56%^ 

 in 5-m depths and in a bottom temperature range 

 of 22.5° to 27.42°C; he never found it in the ocean. 

 Buchanan (1958) similarly found it in 5.5-14-m 

 depths in a temperature range of 27° to 30°C off 

 Accra, Ghana, in what he termed the inshore fine 

 sand community. Chace (1956) recorded it in 

 27.5°C water oflF Los Roques, Venezuela. 



Spawning . — Both the museum material studied 

 and records in literature yield only fragmentary 

 evidence on spawning. Ovigerous females are re- 



corded from December to July in various parts of 

 the geographic range on both sides of the Atlantic. 

 Specifically the records are: Congo and St. 

 Thomas, December; St. Thomas, January; Gren- 

 adines and Cuba, March; Haiti, April; Jamaica 

 and Senegal, May; Colombia, Curagao and Sao 

 Tome (Forest and Guinot, 1966), June; Florida 

 and Puerto Rico, July. 



Distribution. — Off southern Florida through 

 Caribbean Sea to south central Brazil off Estado 

 de Sao Paulo; Bermuda and Cape Verde Islands; 

 Senegal to central Angola (Figure 27). A recent 

 record from North Carolina is regarded as a tem- 

 porary range extension. 



Economic importance. — Gravel (1912), describ- 

 ing fisheries for C. latimanus along the Gulf of 

 Guinea, noted that C. marginatus is also caught 

 all along the coast from Senegal to the Congo 

 under a variety of local names. 



Remarks. — The populations on each side of the 

 Atlantic seem indistinguishable by means of ex- 

 ternal morphological characters. Different names 

 applied to the populations on each side reflect the 

 discontinuity of early collections, Verrill (1908a) 

 for instance considering laruatus the American 

 and africanus the African variety, but with the 

 progress of exploration and inventory it is evident 

 that the whole is a genetic continuum with minor 

 local variations already pointed out. Most modern 

 workers (Capart, 1951; Monod, 1956) accept this 

 idea although deploring the difficulty in identify- 

 ing juveniles. 



Verrill (1908b) early recognized the significance 

 of larval transport in oceanic currents, applying it 

 to populations of C. marginatus in Bermuda that 

 have their origin in the West Indies. It is tempting 

 to make the generalization that this species in its 

 moderate size, short, simply ornamented male 

 first gonopods, and amphi-Atlantic pattern of 

 geographic distribution possibly represents an 

 unspecialized and primitive member of the genus, 

 but such ideas are qualified by the specialization 

 of chelae seemingly well adapted by their dor- 

 soventrally broadened but rather thin fingers for 

 reaching into crevices, perhaps into mollusk 

 shells after they are cracked. In short, generalized 

 structure is hard to assess. 



Some specimens show evidence of massive foul- 

 ing by the barnacle Chelonibia. A male (dry) from 

 Brazil (BMNH 48.86) measuring 89 mm between 



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