Alexandra Hiller

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

The Petrolisthes galathinus complex currently consists of six American species distributed in the West Atlantic, including the amphi-American P. galathinus . All species in the complex are similar in their adult morphology but differ in colour, size, larval morphology, and shape of the adult sternal plate. The West Atlantic species have different g...

The porcellanid genus Enosteoides Johnson, 1970, currently containing six species, was raised in the 1970s to contain aberrant Indo–West Pacific forms of the diverse and cosmopolitan genus Porcellana Lamarck, 1801. Here, we describe the most aberrant form as Enosteoides spinosus sp. nov. , from the northeast and northwest coasts of Australia and pr...

The evolution of marine neotropical shallow water species is expected to have been greatly affected by physical events related to the emergence of the Central American Isthmus. The anomuran crab Megalobrachium, a strictly neotropical porcellanid genus, consists of four species in the West Atlantic (WA) and nine in the East Pacific (EP). Dispersal i...

Petrolisthes virgiliussp. nov. from the Caribbean Sea of Colombia is described. The new species resembles P. tonsorius morphologically but differs from it principally by its color and habitat. Petrolisthes tonsorius is brown or blueish brown and occurs under intertidal boulders strongly exposed to water movement. Petrolisthes virgiliussp. nov. is p...

Polyonyxsocialissp. n. from the South China Sea of Vietnam is described. The new species was collected in a previous study that compared the vertebrate and invertebrate symbiont communities living in the tubes of two syntopic species of the polychaete genus Chaetopterus . Polyonyxsocialissp. n. inhabits the tubes of the smaller polychaete species a...

Aliaporcellanaspongicolasp. n. from the Philippines and Indonesia is described. The new species has been frequently photographed by divers because of its striking coloration, but has not been described yet. Aliaporcellanaspongicolasp. n. is in fact a widespread commensal of barrel sponges of the genus Xestospongia and other sponges. Morphological c...

A new species of porcellanid crab from the southern Caribbean Sea is described. Pachycheles tuerkayi n. sp. has been confused with P. serratus (Benedict, 1901) since the 1950s because the two species are morphologically and ecologically similar and have overlapping distributions in the southern Caribbean. P. tuerkayi n. sp. is restricted to the coa...

Theoretically, species with high population structure are likely to expand their range, because marginal populations are free to adapt to local conditions; however, meta-analyses have found a negative relation between structure and invasiveness. The crab Petrolisthes armatus has a wide native range, which has expanded in the last three decades. We...

Petrolisthespaulayisp. n. is described from specimens collected in French Polynesia. The new species belongs to an assemblage of morphologically similar Indo-West Pacific (IWP) species, here designated as the “mesobranchial-spine group”. All species in the group bear carapace spines, including one or more mesobranchial spines, and transverse, pilif...

A unique case of triple symbiosis between a goby, a pistol shrimp, and a porcellanid crab sharing the same burrow close to reef patches in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia, is described from direct observations for the first time. The burrow, typically occupied by shrimps and gobies, is shared with the porcellanid Enosteoides lobatus. In the goby–shrimp as...

The porcellanid crab Petrolisthes hastatus Stimpson, 1858, has been traditionally viewed as a highly variable species with a wide distribution in the West Pacific. For more than a century there has been taxonomic confusion of this species with morphologically similar taxa, some of which were synonymized with Stimpson’s taxon. We redefine Petrolisth...

Rhizocephalans of the order Akentrogonida are parasitic barnacles that infest decapods, stomatopods, peracarids, and other cirripedes. Within this order, Thompsoniidae is found in decapods and stomatopods, and is a family comprised of species characterized by having multiple globular reproductive bodies (externae) erupting from the host’s extremiti...

Porcellanids are filter-feeders and most often inhabitants of the rocky intertidal and upper subtidal of all oceans. The limiting resource for these crabs is not food but space, which must meet the conditions of being hard, optimally exposed regarding water movement, and offering the crabs protection from predators. An optimal filtering spot is the...

The early larval development of the western Atlantic porcellanid crab Petrolisthes caribensis Werding, 1983 was studied under laboratory conditions. The two zoeal stages are described and illustrated. P. caribensis has bifid lateral spines on the telson of the first zoea. A short serrated seta on the terminal article of the endopodite of the second...

Petrolisthes militaris (Heller, 1862) is redescribed on the basis ofmaterial from the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum-Naturalis, Leiden, and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. A different morphotype, consistently showing a different distributional and ecological range from that of P. militaris, is here described as P. holthuisi n. s...

Petrolisthes edwardsii (de Saussure, 1853) has been viewed as a morphologically variable species with a wide distribution in the tropical and subtropical eastern Pacific. The original description of this species is rather inaccurate, and for more than a century there has been confusion regarding the final repository of type specimens. Material rece...

The porcellanid crabs from the Red Sea are revised based on museum collections. A complete compilation of all species known from the Red Sea is presented, including four new records of species for that region. Petrolisthes aegyptiacus n. sp. is described on the basis of an old collection of porcellanids from the Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart. Th...

The porcellanid crabs from the Red Sea are revised based on museum collections. A complete compilation of all species known from the Red Sea is presented, including four new records of species for that region. Petrolisthes aegyptiacus n. sp. is described on the basis of an old collection of porcellanids from the Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart. Th...

While the amphi-American porcellanid crab Petrolistes galathinus has been traditionally viewed as a highly variable species containing several different color forms, we consider it to be a complex of at least 6 morphologically similar species with similar ecological requirements, but diagnosable through coloration. Here we surveyed sequence variati...