Endangered
Purple Marsh Crab
Afrithelphusa monodosa
Purple Marsh Crab is a decapod crustacean in the family Deckeniidae (order Decapoda) — Afrithelphusa monodosa, recorded as Endangered and tied to Guinea-Bissau and Guinea.
The crayfish or crab
Decapods are ten-legged crustaceans — crabs, shrimps, and crayfishes. Freshwater species here are usually tied to a drainage.
Malacostracans include crayfishes, crabs, and shrimps. Freshwater species are often narrow endemics.
Range and habitat
The species belongs to the genus Afrithelphusa of freshwater crabs and is endemic to West African Guinea. It lives in swamps and permanent wetlands in the savanna region of northwestern Guinea.
GBIF currently lists 7 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Freshwater crayfishes and crabs walk the bed. Dams, silt, and introduced species cut a drainage into fragments they cannot cross.
Crayfishes and crabs need cover and clean water. A named form from one creek is not interchangeable with the next drainage.
In crisis
Purple Marsh Crab is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the Dutch Wikipedia article on Afrithelphusa monodosa, translated and retold in English, plus Wikidata item Q4847725 and GBIF occurrence geography. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Confirm status and range on iucnredlist.org.
