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Engaeus hemicirratulus Smith and Schuster 1913

Keith A. Crandall
Containing group: Engaeus

Types

Syntypes. As given by Lew Ton & Poore (1987).

Type Locality

see "Types."

Distribution

This species is both widespead and abundant in southern Victoria, occuring on both sides of the La Trobe River Valley, usually above an altitude of 100 m, in the Western and Eastern Strzelecki Ranges and in the southwestern parts of the Australian Alps. The record of a specimen from Wilsons Promontory in the Museum of Victoria has not been substantiated (in fact this area has not been well investigated for parastacid fauna).

Habitat

E. hemicirratulus is the only species in the genus which exclusively occupies burrows in type 3 habitats; these are typically situated in the yellow-orange clay-dominated soils of South Gippsland, often in what was formerly dense wet sclerophyll forest dominated by the mountain ash Eucalyptus regnans. The burrows exhibit the typical characteristics of those constructed by the other species occupying this habitat, including fan-shaped chimneys and tunnels descending obliquely to chambers; these burrows are often shallow, with the chambers occasionally just below the surface of the ground (animals are most easily obtained from such burrows). Larger burrow systems containing family groups of crayfish exhibit multiple juvenile openings on the surface and greatly enlarged chambers.

References

Horwitz, Pierre. 1990. A Taxonomic Revision of Species in the Freshwater Crayfish Genus Engaeus Erichson (Decapoda: Parastacidae). Invertebr. Taxon., 1990, 4, 427-614.

Lew Ton, H. M., and G. C. B. Poore. 1987. Types of Parastacidae (Crustacea: Decapoda) held in the Museum of Victoria. Occasional Papers from the Museum of Victoria 3, 21-29.

Smith, G. W. and W. H. J. Schuster. 1913. The genus Engaeus, or the land crayfishes of Australia. Proceedings of the Zoological Society (London) 1913, 112-127.

About This Page
Page constructed by Emily Browne.

Keith A. Crandall
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

Page: Tree of Life Engaeus hemicirratulus Smith and Schuster 1913. Authored by Keith A. Crandall. The TEXT of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - Version 3.0. Note that images and other media featured on this page are each governed by their own license, and they may or may not be available for reuse. Click on an image or a media link to access the media data window, which provides the relevant licensing information. For the general terms and conditions of ToL material reuse and redistribution, please see the Tree of Life Copyright Policies.

Citing this page:

Crandall, Keith A. 2001. Engaeus hemicirratulus Smith and Schuster 1913. Version 01 January 2001 (under construction). http://tolweb.org/Engaeus_hemicirratulus/7830/2001.01.01 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/

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