Rare purple crab spotted in Karnataka

MANGALURU: A rare purple crab was spotted in the Western Ghats area of Uttara Kannada district recently.
Dr MS Mustak, department of applied zoology, Mangalore University, said that his PhD student Supreet Kadkol, spotted the rare crab, purple in colour, when he was travelling from the Ghat section to the seashore. The crab was on the road basking, he said.
“The six mature crabs were spotted on the roadside and under the rocks around the terrestrial habitat, and according to literature these fresh water purple crabs are only found during the rainy season.The locals present there were also surprised by the colour of the crab. Preliminary studies and morphometric analysis revealed that the purple crab belongs to the genus Ghatiana. We are yet to ascertain if it is a new species for which molecular taxonomic analysis is being undertaken at the lab,” Dr Mustak said.
A purple tree crab was first spotted by Arjun Kamdar and team inJuly 2015 from rainwater-containing tree holes in Amboli, Maharashtra. Later it was spotted in 2017 at the Sharavathi valley in Shivamogga. It was then spotted by the Wildlife Conservation and Awareness Team. “This species looks different from those that have been reported earlier,” said Dr Mustak.