Parastacidae

The Parastacidae are the family of freshwater crayfish found in the Southern Hemisphere. The family is a classic Gondwana-distributed taxon, with extant members in South America, Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea, and extinct taxa also in Antarctica.

Parastacidae
Temporal range:
Cherax pulcher
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Malacostraca
Order: Decapoda
Suborder: Pleocyemata
Infraorder: Astacidea
Superfamily: Parastacoidea
Huxley, 1879
Family: Parastacidae
Huxley, 1879 [1]
Genera

Classification and phylogeny

Parastacidae belongs to the superfamily Parastacoidea, the monotypic taxon which contains all crayfish in the Southern Hemisphere. Parastacoidea is the sister taxon to Astacoidea, which contains all crayfish of the Northern Hemisphere. Crayfish and lobsters together comprise the infraorder Astacidea, as shown in the simplified cladogram below:[2][3][4]

Astacidea
clawed lobsters
Enoplometopoidea

Enoplometopidae

Nephropoidea

Nephropidae

crayfish
Parastacoidea

Parastacidae

Astacoidea

Cambaroididae

Astacidae

Cambaridae

Distribution
The natural range of the family Parastacidae [5]

Three genera are found in Chile, Virilastacus, Samastacus and Parastacus, the last of which also occurs disjunctly in southern Brazil and Uruguay.

There are no crayfish native to continental Africa, but seven species on Madagascar, all of the genus Astacoides.[6]

Australasia is particularly rich in crayfish. The small genus Paranephrops is endemic to New Zealand. The genera Astacopsis is endemic to Tasmania, while a further two are found on either side of the Bass Strait – Geocharax and Engaeus. The greatest diversity, however, is found on the Australian mainland. Three genera are endemic and have restricted distributions (Engaewa, Gramastacus and Tenuibranchiurus), while two are more widespread and contain more than one hundred species between them: Euastacus, around the Australian coast from Melbourne to Brisbane, and Cherax across Australia and New Guinea. The Tasmanian genus Parastacoides was determined to be a synonym of Geocharax, and is no longer valid.[7]

Fossil record

The oldest specimens from the family Parastacidae are the Albian fossils of Palaeoechinastacus from Victoria, Australia.[8] The only northern hemisphere representative is also a fossil, Aenigmastacus crandalli from Canada.[9]

References
  1. T. H. Huxley (1879). The Crayfish: an Introduction to the Study of Zoology. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.
  2. Wolfe, Joanna M.; Breinholt, Jesse W.; Crandall, Keith A.; Lemmon, Alan R.; Lemmon, Emily Moriarty; Timm, Laura E.; Siddall, Mark E.; Bracken-Grissom, Heather D. (24 April 2019). "A phylogenomic framework, evolutionary timeline and genomic resources for comparative studies of decapod crustaceans". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 286 (1901). doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.0079. PMC 6501934. PMID 31014217.
  3. Crandall, Keith A.; De Grave, Sammy (2017). "An updated classification of the freshwater crayfishes (Decapoda: Astacidea) of the world, with a complete species list". Journal of Crustacean Biology. 37 (5): 615–653. doi:10.1093/jcbiol/rux070.
  4. Heather D. Bracken-Grissom; Shane T. Ahyong; Richard D. Wilkinson; Rodney M. Feldmann; Carrie E. Schweitzer; Jesse W. Breinholt; Matthew Bendall; Ferran Palero; Tin-Yam Chan; Darryl L. Felder; Rafael Robles; Ka-Hou Chu; Ling-Ming Tsang; Dohyup Kim; Joel W. Martin; Keith A. Crandall (July 2014). "The Emergence of Lobsters: Phylogenetic Relationships, Morphological Evolution and Divergence Time Comparisons of an Ancient Group (Decapoda: Achelata, Astacidea, Glypheidea, Polychelida)". Systematic Biology. 63 (4): 457–479. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syu008. PMID 24562813.
  5. J. W. Fetzner Jr (2005). "The crayfish and lobster taxonomy browser: a global taxonomic resource for freshwater crayfish and their closest relatives". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2006.
  6. Christopher B. Boyko; Olga Ramilijaona Ravoahangimalala; Désiré Randriamasimanana; Tony Harilala Razafindrazaka (2005). "Astacoides hobbsi, a new crayfish (Crustacea: Decapoda: Parastacidae) from Madagascar" (PDF). Zootaxa. 1091: 41–51. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.1091.1.3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-08-08. Retrieved 2012-02-15.
  7. "World Register of Marine Species, genus Geocharax". Retrieved 2021-10-25.
  8. Anthony J. Martin; Thomas H. Rich; Gary C. B. Poore; Mark B. Schultz; Christopher M. Austin; Lesley Kool; Patricia Vickers-Rich (2008). "Fossil evidence in Australia for oldest known freshwater crayfish of Gondwana" (PDF). Gondwana Research. 14 (3): 287–296. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2008.01.002. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-17. Retrieved 2012-02-15.
  9. Rodney A. Feldmann, Carrie E. Schweitzer & John Leahy (2011). "New Eocene crayfish from the McAbee Beds in British Columbia: First record of Parastacoidea in the Northern Hemisphere". Journal of Crustacean Biology. 31 (2): 320–331. doi:10.1651/10-3399.1.
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