Figure 24. Minuca virens

Alt Text: Composite photograph of the Minuca virens fiddler crab which includes several black & white images of different views of the crab, a color photograph, and a distribution map. Composite Image Description: Figure 24. Minuca virens (Salmon and Astaides, 1968). UNI 457. Collected 22 April 1977, USA, Texas, San Patricio Co., Corpus Christi Bay, Ingleside Cove (27.837838, -97.220076). Scale Bar = 10mm. (A) Dorsal view. (B) Front view. (C) Inner cheliped. (D) Ocular view. (E) Ambulatory. (F) Color Photo. (G) Distribution Map (Finke 2024). Species Description: M. virens is a cryptic species closely related to M. rapax. There is no taxonomic character to distinguish M. virens from M. rapax. Some variation exists in morphological and behavioral characters, but they are not discrete nor consistent enough to be dependable diagnostics. However, differential growth of anatomical structures appears to vary between Gulf and other population of M. rapax. However, the morphologically cryptic M. virens can be identified as a molecular operational taxonomic unit (Morard et al. 2016) due to its unique DNA sequences. Clearly, M. virens is an evolutionarily significant unit (Chu et al. 2015) geographically separated from the more widely distributed M. rapax complex. Since M. virens offspring are not apparently dispersed widely by tidal and ocean currents, successive generations appear to have inbred while surviving stressful environmental pressures. Thus, they have become genetically distinct from ancestral M. rapax populations. It is notable that the split between the current M. rapax and M. virens was around 2mya (Thurman et al. 2018). Fig. 24G illustrates the distribution of M. virens is in the north and western Gulf of Mexico. Fig. 24 F is the typical color of live M. virens.