List of freshwater crabs of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is an island close to the southern end of India with a tropical environment. The invertebrate fauna is as large as it is common to other regions of the world. There are about two million species of arthropods found in the world, and still it is counting with many new species still being discovered. It is very complicated and difficult to summarize the exact number of species found within a certain region.

The following list provide the freshwater crabs of Sri Lanka.

Freshwater crabs

Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Crustacea
Class: Malacostraca
Order: Decapoda

Sri Lanka's freshwater crab fauna is extremely important to the island, due to its endemism. All recorded 51 species, along with five genera, are totally endemic to Sri Lanka.[1][2] 98% of those crabs are IUCN categorized as threatened, endangered or critically endangered animals due to habitat declining, capturing for food, illegal collecting and exotic species.[3][4]

Family: Gecarcinucidae

References

  1. ↑ Bambaradeniya, Channa N. B. "The Fauna of Sri Lanka: Status of Taxonomy, Research, and Conservation". Amazon.com. Google books. Retrieved 23 January 2016.
  2. ↑ Bandara, I.N. "Endemic Fresh Water Crabs of Sri Lanka". slendemics.net. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  3. ↑ Rodrigo, Malaka. "Endemic freshwater crabs under threat, need protection: Experts". the Sunday Times. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  4. ↑ "40 species of freshwater crab in Sri Lanka face extinction". Bailaman. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  5. ↑ "The One and Only Tree-climbing Freshwater Crab in Sri Lanka". Gallicissa. Retrieved 5 June 2016.

Bibliography

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.