Portunidae


Portunidae is a family of crabs which contains the swimming crabs.

Description

Portunid crabs are characterised by the flattening of the fifth pair of legs into broad paddles, which are used for swimming. This ability, together with their strong, sharp claws, allows many species to be fast and aggressive predators.

Examples

Its members include many well-known shoreline crabs, such as the European shore crab, blue crab, velvet crab and lady crab. Two genera in the family are contrastingly named Scylla and Charybdis; the former contains the economically important species black crab and Scylla paramamosain.

Taxonomy

The circumscription of the family varies, with some authors treating "Carcinidae", "Catoptridae" and "Macropipidae" as separate families, and others considering them subfamilies of a wider Portunidae. Swimming crabs reach their greatest species diversity in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Extinct genera are marked with an obelisk.
;Caphyrinae Guérin, 1832
;Carcininae MacLeay, 1838
;Carupinae Paul’son, 1875
;Podophthalminae Dana, 1851
;Polybiinae Ortmann, 1893
;Portuninae Rafinesque, 1815
;Thalamitinae Paul’son, 1875
;incertae sedis