News from a small island – first record of a freshwater shrimp (Decapoda, Atyidae, Caridina) from Peleng, Banggai Islands, Indonesia
Kristina von Rintelen , Andreas Karge & Werner Klotz
Pages 2243-2256 | Received 05 Nov 2007, Accepted 04 Jun 2008, Published online: 02 Dec 2010 (PDF)

Abstract The Indonesian island Sulawesi is well known for its fascinating fauna. Among the atyid and palaemonid freshwater shrimps described from Sulawesi are also a number of endemic species. In contrast, freshwater shrimps have never been reported from the nearby and smaller Peleng Island. Here we describe Caridina thomasi sp. nov. as a first record of an atyid freshwater shrimp from Peleng and compare it with atyids from Sulawesi and other localities. The new species is probably endemic to the island and shows some characters never described in the genus Caridina before. However, a molecular phylogeny of atyid shrimps from the Indo‐West Pacific based on mitochondrial DNA (16S) places C. thomasi within a clade of typical species of Caridina. We tentatively assign the new species to the genus Caridina and discuss the possibility of future changes in the classification of species in this genus.