ANIMALS - CRUSTACEANS - CRABS - BURROWING CRAB (NEOHELICE GRANULATA)

Animals - Crustaceans - Crabs

Burrowing crab (Neohelice granulata)

Scientific Classification:

Kingdom : Animalia
Phylum : Arthropoda
Subphylum : Crustacea
Class : Malacostraca
Order : Decapoda
Infraorder : Brachyura
Family : Varunidae
Genus : Neohelice
Species : N. Granulata

Description:

The Burrowing crab (Neohelice granulata) is a species of crab in the family Varunidae, and the only species in the genus Neohelice. In 2009, it was estimated that N. granulata was the sixth most studied species of crab.

Neohelice is found in the south-western Atlantic Ocean, from the Golfo San José (on the north side of the Valdes Peninsula in Patagonia, Argentina) to the Laguna Araruama in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. The diet of Neohelice in the wild most consists of sediment, Spartina and plant-derived detritus.

The first report of Neohelice was probably that made by Alcide d’Orbigny during an expedition to South America between 1826 and 1834. He included details of the crab's ecology, including their burrows, but did not name the species. The first person to described the species taxonomically was James Dwight Dana, who named it Chasmagnathus granulatus in his 1851 work reporting the results of the United States Exploring Expedition (also known as the "Wilkes expedition"). In 1918, Mary J. Rathbun redescribed the species under the modified name "Chasmagnathus granulata", which remained in occasional use along Dana's name until 2006, when Katushi Sakai, Michael Türkay and Si-Liang Yang revised the genera Helice and Chasmagnathus. They restricted both genera to those species occurring in East Asia, and erected a new genus for C. granulatus, which thus became Neohelice granulata, as well as the genera Austrohelice and Pseudohelice.

Neohelice granulata has emerged since the 1980s as a model species in a variety of biological fields. Much of the scientific research has focused on the species' tolerance of both fresh water and brine (euryhalinity) and its semiterrestrial habit. It has also been investigated for research into neurophysiology, toxicology and ecosystem dynamics. Such breadth of study is unusual for a model organism.

Binomial Name:

Name : Neohelice granulata
Taxonomist : James Dwight Dana (Utica - United States of America)
Year : 1851
Subspecies : None or not data available
Synonyms : Chasmagnathus granulata, Helice gaudichaudi

Conservation Status by IUCN:

Status : Not Evaluated, or not data available

Philatelic Issues

2015 - Uruguay - Stamp 9 of 10, from Wetland Animals Series

Issue information:

Country: Uruguay
Date: June 5th, 2015
Printed: 10.000 Copies
Type: Stamp from Series of 10 Stamps
Value: UYP 15

Stamp: Rectangular
Size: 39 mm. x 27 mm.
Perforation: Circular
Gum: Water Activated