Eriphia sebana

Eriphia sebana (Shaw & Nodder, 1803) Eriphia sebana — Morton and Morton 1983: 273. Taxonomy: Koh and Ng (2008). Type: Neotype ò ZRC 1999.1020 (designated by Koh and Ng 2008). Type locality: Okinawa, Japan (neotype). Distribution: Widespread in the Indo-Pacific region: East Africa, India, to Australia, Samoa, French Polynesia, Hawaii; South China Sea and East Asia (Koh and Ng 2008; Yang et al. 2008). Habitat: Intertidal and shallow subtidal, along crevices of rocks and among coral reefs (Dai and Yang 1991). Remarks: The species appears to be distributed in more oceanic localities, and the only reliable record in the Chinese literature was from the Paracel (= Xisha) Islands (Chen and Lan 1978; Dai and Yang 1991; Yang et al. 2008), elsewhere in East Asia from Pingtung and Taitung, Taiwan, and the Ryukyus, Japan. The only local record provided by Morton and Morton (1983) did not provide any illustrations but noted “a genus already noted on exposed shores” (p. 273). In the last two decades, we have not seen any Hong Kong material identifiable as E. sebana. As this is a common species wherever it is found, the record by Morton and Morton (1983) might have been based on a misidentification of the more common E. ferox. We include it as it is likely to be found in Hong Kong in the future; it is inside the known range of the species.