Palinustus
Genus of spiny lobsters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Palinustus, sometimes referred to as blunthorn lobsters,[2] is a genus of spiny lobsters which primarily live in coral reefs along the Indo-West Pacific region, with some members of this genus being found in the Western Atlantic, Taiwan, and Japan.[3]
| Palinustus | |
|---|---|
| |
| Palinustus waguensis | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Clade: | Pancrustacea |
| Class: | Malacostraca |
| Order: | Decapoda |
| Suborder: | Pleocyemata |
| Family: | Palinuridae |
| Genus: | Palinustus A. Milne Edwards, 1880 |
| Type species | |
| Palinustus truncatus A. Milne Edwards, 1880[1] | |
Like many other members of its family, Palinuridae, members of the Palinustus genus have spiny bodies, with slightly prismatic carapaces. Notably, members of the Palinustus genus can be distinguished from other genera of spiny lobsters through their widely separated supraorbital horns with truncated ends, along with their large, kidney-shaped eyes and long antennas which end in a whip-like flagellum. While there exists some variation in sizes and colour amongst species, most members of the Palinustus genus have bodies primarily consisting of orange and red tones, along with lighter-coloured bands on its pereiopods and/or antennae.[3]
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Species of this genus are generally distributed across deep-water equatorial contexts, making their distribution patterns similar to fellow Palinuridae genera Puerulus, Justitia, and Linuparus.[4] They mostly inhabit the deeper portions of rocky habitats and reef slopes at depths of 59-670m, making them hard to capture and sample when using traditional methods.[5][2]
Taxonomy
The genus Palinustus was first introduced in 1880 by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, a French carcinologist, along with the description of Palinustus truncatus, making it the type species of the genus.[1]
The genus Palinustus comprises five recognised extant species.[6][3]
Previously, an additional species in the genus, Palinustus phoberus, was described by de French malacologist and zoologist Alphonse Trémeau de Rochebrune in 1883. However, that has since been found to be a junior subjective synonym of the earlier described Panulirus regius (de Brito Capello, 1864), and is now accepted as the latter.[7] Limited number of specimens due to difficulties in retrieving wild samples have been a key taxonomic problem, with specimens of ''Palinustus mossambicus'' and ''Palinustus waguensis'' having been confused for one another in the past.[3] ''Palinustus unicornutus'' has also been previously recognised as a variation of Palinustus waguensis in the past, but are now recognised as discrete species.[8]
| Image | Scientific name | Common name | Distribution | IUCN status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | Palinustus holthuisi Chan & Yu, 1995 | - | Taiwan and Japan | DD |
| - | Palinustus mossambicus Barnard, 1926 | Buffalo blunthorn lobster[9] | Mozambique and Somalia | DD |
.jpeg) | Palinustus truncatus A. Milne-Edwards, 1880 | American blunthorn lobster[10] | Western Atlantic: Grenadines, The Guianas, the mouth of the Amazon River, Brazil | LC |
| - | Palinustus unicornutus Berry, 1979 | Unicorn blunthorn lobster[11] | Indo-west Pacific: South Africa (east coast), Glorioso Islands, La Reunion Island, Comoro Islands, Japan, Indonesia, New Caledonia, Taiwan, the Philippines, French Polynesia | LC |
.jpeg) | Palinustus waguensis Kubo, 1963 | Japanese blunthorn lobster[12] | Indo-west Pacific: Japan, Thailand, Southwest India, Andaman Islands[13] | LC |