Dr. Rahayu and Dr. Komai are happy to be here!
This week, the Raffles Museum is hosting two hermit crab experts from Indonesia and Japan. Co-authors of “A catalogue of the hermit crabs of Taiwan” (with Dr.Patsy Mclaughlin [deceased] and Dr. Chan Tin-Yam [National Taiwan Ocean University]), Dr Dwi Listyo Rahayu last visited us ten months ago and is currently a visiting Research Fellow at the Tropical Marine Science Institute while Dr. Komai Tomoyuki is the Curator of Aquatic Invertebrates at Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, Japan.
They are here at the invitation of the museum to study hermit crab material collected from the PANGLAO 2004 and 2005 expeditions with the aim of producing a series of papers documenting the diversity of hermit crabs collected from these expeditions. Only a few days into their study, they have found at least ten species new to science! Here is a preview of one such new species, a beautiful and tiny Pylopaguropsis, measuring only a few millimetres in length. Good things do come in small packages!
Pylopaguropsis sp.
Pylopaguropsis sp. in its shell
