Guinotia dentata
| Guinotia dentata | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Crustacea |
| Class: | Malacostraca |
| Order: | Decapoda |
| Infraorder: | Brachyura |
| Family: | Pseudothelphusidae |
| Genus: | Guinotia |
| Species: | G. dentata |
| Binomial name | |
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Guinotia dentata (Latreille, 1825) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Guinotia dentata, commonly known as cyrique, is a West Indian species of freshwater crab in the family Pseudothelphusidae. They have few predators. They are easily caught and thus are used locally as a food source.
Guinotia dentata is almost oval in shape and the teeth on its carapace are very small. It is a yellow-brown colour and its shell can grow to 65 millimetres (2.6 in) long; it is about 3/5 long as wide. The eyestalks are yellow whilst the corneas are black, but they are probably best identifiable by their large yellow claws with straight sharply pointed fingers.
The species sometimes has almost an entire dorsal surface of carapace yellow with submarginal brown.
Its shell has a cervical meandering curve which does not quite touch the edge of the shell. About 24 cubicles are well defined. The forehead is low, excavated and depressed and of uniform height. Its pereiopods are fairly average and its chelae are without prominent, swollen protuberance on outer surface near the base of the fingers.
The species is native mostly to Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint Lucia. Its distribution is fragmented because of its presence on multiple islands, but it is plentiful in the regions it inhabits.
Guinotia dentata lives mostly in streams (particularly shady ones) and ponds and may sometimes be seen on land, though it avoids areas that are excessively dry. It has not yet been observed in estuaries. It lives in streams and rives in the highlands of the Lesser Antilles, not including the Virgin Islands. They are known to hide under roots of trees, rocks and rotten wood where they dig shallow burrows which are oval in shape. They have been spotted at altitudes of 2,850 ft (870 m). They certainly inhabit the Boeri Lake and may inhabit Freshwater Lake.
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Wikipedia