14 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 292 



some of them, conclusions concerning their probable ancestral home 

 and the time of their reaching the islands are possible. 



By whatever means or from whatever source the ancestral decapods 

 reached the West Indies, having amved — in the words of Simpson 

 (1956), primarily in reference to the advent of mammahan stocks 

 in the Antilles — they "would find in the Greater Antilles what was 

 essentially an ecological vacuum for them. Once the hazardous trip 

 was over, survival and expansion would be much more likely than 

 not." 



The folloAving tabulation and the species records hsted on page 7 

 summarize the state of our knowledge of the occurrence of the fresh- 

 water and terrestrial decapods of the Bermudas and the West Indies. 

 The distributions indicated undoubtedly reflect, to some degree, the 

 activities of collectors on the respective islands rather than the actual 

 richness of their faunas. It seems probable, however, that the larger 

 numbers of species of decapods occur on the larger islands of the 

 Greater Antilles, where the endemic faunas also are probably much 

 richer, than on the other islands. 



Distribution of the Fauna 



I. Antillean endemics (the unique types of both Epilobocera granulala and 

 Sesarma hanseni are labeled "West Indies'* and are not included in this list) 



A. Lesser Antilles, excluding Virgin Islands 



Guinotia dentata 



B. Greater Antilles and Virgin Islands 



1. Cuba 



Typhlatya garciai, Troglocubanus calcis, T. eigenmanni 

 (also Isla de Pinos), T. gibarensis, T. inermis, Barbovria 

 cubensis, Procambarus atkinsoni (Isla de Pinos) ; P. c. cubensis 

 (also Isla de Pinos), P. c. rivalis, P. niveus, Epilobocera 

 armata, E. cubensis, E. gertraudae, E. gilmanni, Pseudothel- 

 phusa affinis 



2. Jamaica 



Troglocubanus jamaicensis, Glyptograpsus jamaicensis, Meto- 

 paulias depressus, Sesarma bidentatum, S. jarvisi, S. verleyi 



3. Hispaniola 



Epilobocera haytensis 



4. Puerto Rico and Saint Croix 



Epilobocera sinuatifrons 



5. Puerto Rico and Saint Thomas 



Atya lanipes 



C. Lesser and Greater Antilles 



?Jonga serrei, "iMicralya poeyi, Polimirim americana, Typh- 

 latya monae, Xiphocaris elongata, Macrobrachium fausiinum *, 

 Pachygrapsus corrugatus 2, Uca burgersi 



'Also Bahamas. 



