Contributions to the Knowledge of the Alpheid Shrimp 
of the Pacific Ocean 
Part V. The Indo-Pacific Members of the Genus At h anas 1 
Albert H. Banner and Dora May Banner 2 
The FOUR PAPERS previously published in this 
series have dealt with Alpheid shrimp by geo - 
graphical areas. For this paper, because a major 
revision of the genus is needed and the shrimps 
upon which the revision is based come from 
many different regions of the Pacific, it was 
considered better to deal with the genus as a 
whole. Some of the specimens here discussed 
have been reported in the four previous studies. 
Those specimens which have not been listed 
in the previous studies come from three major 
sources: specimens collected on the Coral Atoll 
Investigations made by the Pacific Science 
Board; specimens collected by the senior author 
travelling in the central Pacific under a grant 
from Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu; and 
specimens collected at Eniwetok and other Mar- 
shall Islands, by the senior author and by others 
under the sponsorship of the Atomic Energy 
Commission. In this paper, details on collections 
are not given; these can be found in previous 
or future papers. 
The present study has been supported by Na- 
tional Science Foundation Grant NSF-G-1754. 
The authors wish to acknowledge their indebted- 
ness to L. B. Holthuis for the use of the bibli- 
ography of species of higher Crustacea prepared 
by him; without this help the list of references 
would have been almost impossible to prepare, 
especially in Honolulu where the libraries lack 
many of the older works. 
Since the genus Athanas was first described 
by Leach in 1814, some 43 specific and sub- 
specific names have been applied to the mem- 
bers of this genus, only 7 of which are not 
known from the Pacific and Indian oceans. The 
shrimp in this genus are small and inconspicu- 
ous; as a result most of the previous workers 
1 Contribution No. 124, Hawaii Marine Laboratory. 
Manuscript received November 1, 1958. 
2 Department of Zoology and Entomology, Univer- 
sity of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. 
had only a few specimens, often broken, upon 
which to base their description; further, of the 
Indo-Pacific species, at least 18 have not been 
reported since their original capture. 
The Indo-Pacific genus Arete, long accepted 
as being closely related to Athanas , has a some- 
what similar history. Since the genus was erected 
by Stimpson in 1861 for the species A. dorsalis , 
11 names have been applied to species within 
the genus, and 4 of these names have been based 
upon 3 specimens or less. 
The specimens available for this study were 
in some cases collected in large numbers. As will 
be discussed below, almost all of the species 
which are so represented show marked variation 
with size and sex in the form of the large chelae, 
and several species appear to vary considerably 
in the form of the rostrum and teeth of the 
carapace about the eyes. As these are the chief 
characteristics that have been used in the separa- 
tion of many of the species, a revision of the two 
genera is necessary. Unfortunately, the present 
collections do not contain representatives of 
enough species to permit a monographic revi- 
sion, so the purpose of this paper will be to 
merely initiate such a revision, which other 
workers from other parts of the Indo-Pacific 
may elaborate upon and finish. 
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 
species OF Athanas and Arete 
In the following listing, all species placed in 
these genera have been listed with reference to 
the original description and all subsequent Indo- 
Pacific records. The number of specimens upon 
which the original description or subsequent 
redescription were based has been given, wher- 
ever possible, together with the localities where 
the specimens were collected. Most synonyms 
are indicated in this listing; in the synonymies 
later in the paper, reference is made back to this 
listing. 
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