Arthropoda: Crustacea: Malacostraca:Decapoda: Anomura

Introduction: Decapoda is an economically important and highly diverse order of the subphylum Crustacea and they are available in various ecosystems like marine, freshwater, brackish water, mangrove and even terrestrial environment.The infra order Anomura is a morphologically diverse group of decapod crustaceans, which includes squat lobsters, yeti lobsters, porcelain crabs, mole crabs, king crabs, hairy stone crabs, hermit crabs and coconut crabs.As for as the anomuran crabs are concerned commendable systematic studies were carried out by Heller (1865) Wood-Mason and Alcock (1891), Alcock and Anderson (1894, 1899), Alcock (1901, 1905) and Borradaile (1904) which is followed by several other workers.The checklists published by the recent workers on Indian Anomuran crabs (Prakash et al. 2013;Trivedi and Vachhrajani, 2017, Pati, 2020) forms a baseline information to trace various literatures related to the Indian Anomuran crabs.Recently Tiwari et al.(2024), added six species of squat lobsters from Andaman, Kerala and Tamilnadu, of which five are new to science; Mitra et al (2024) described a porcelain crab from West Bengal.Global diversity: This infraorder includes around 3300 valid species belonging to 242 genera and 23 families, globally (Patel et al., 2022) Diversity in India: Around 246 species of anomurans belonging to 65 genera, 15 families and four suborders recorded from India.Diversity in States (Table) ARTHROPODA: CRUSTACEA: MALACOSTRACA: DECAPODA: ANOMURA Endemism: 51 species are endemic to India and a maximum endemism is observed in Andaman & Nicobar Islands -46 species.Habitat: They inhabit marine, freshwater, brackish water, mangrove and even terrestrial environment.