Hi everyone,
I have come across a shrimp living with Tripneustes gratilla (Linnaeus, 1758). It is a black color small shrimp, which refuge among the spines of mostly Tripneustes gratilla and even Stomopneustes variolaris (Lamarck, 1816). Most of the keys that are available for identification of commercial shrimps.
If anyone can help me to identify the shrimp, that would be wonderful.
Thanking you in advance for your comments..
Best regards
Gayashan
Hi Gayashan, Probably you need to see some paper on Palemonid shrimp more than commercial shrimps. Authors as Bruce, Holthuis could help you. Along the Mexican Pacific coast we have seen the shrimps Periclinenes soror and Tuleariocaris holthuisi assosiated with echinoderms but your picture do not seems to thoses species.
Regards, Luis.
This looks like a snapping shrimp also popularly referred as pistol shrimps! many are symbiotic with sea urchins living between the spines..where was this collected from Gulf of Mannar? or eastern shores of Sri Lanka?
Dear Gayashan, the shrimp is definitively an alpheid shrimp (or pistol shrimp). Further south in the Indian Ocean (Mozambique) you may find some dark coloured alpheids associated to sea urchins, such as Athanas indicus, A. dorsalis and Tuleariocaris sarec. But I'm sure that other species may occur in Sri Lanka. Matz Berggren form Gotemburg (Sweden) may be worth to contact, see his reference:
Berggren, M. (2014) Shrimps in coral reefs and other habitats in the surrounding waters of Inhaca Island. Pp 207-213 in: The Maputo Bay Ecosystem (Paula, J. & S. Bandeira, eds), WIOMSA, Zanzibar.
Thank you very much for your valuable comments Dear. Luis, Deepak and Jose..
You are welcome Gayashan and all the best with research..
Alas, Libke Holthuis passed away, but you can contact his successor, who is specialized in commensal shrimps. His name is Charles Fransen, see
https://science.naturalis.nl/en/people/scientists/charles-fransen/
Very difficult to tell from this photo but probably an Arete sp. which as others in this post have said is a member of the Alpheidae. The genus Arete requires revision but all known members are commensal with sea urchins. Without a specimen (or even with!) a specific ID may not be possible.
Hi Gayashan,
I assume everybody else have proposed an alpheid species based on what is known from the described urchin-associated shrimp fauna of the Indian Ocean, as the photo quality makes it really difficult to be 100% sure it is an alpheid. It most probably is, but as Christopher Ashelby said, the specimen is critical. Do you have the specimen? Any chance on getting more pictures of it, even if it is now preserved?
Perhaps you should also contact Dr. Arthur Anker, another specialist on alpheids, or Dr. Sammy DeGrave, specialist on pontoninae, a group where some species tend to be confused with alpheids.
Dear Bert W Hoeksema , Christopher Ashelby and Nuno Simoes
Thank you very much for the information I will contact them..
Yes Nuno I have the specimen with me and I will have more photos and upload them soon.
Thank you again.....
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