(H. Milne Edwards, 1834)
The dorsal surface of the carapace and the supero-external surface of the cheliped palm have a smooth appearance, rarely finely granulose. The ambulatory legs are practically naked, at the most, with some sparse setae. The four antero-lateral teeth, behind the exorbital angle, are lobate, the first and last being very feeble. The front is narrow; the fronto-orbital width measured between the exorbital angles, is about half the maximum width of the carapace. The superior face of the cheliped carpus is smooth and without lobes. On the dorsal surface of the carapace, 2M is well delineated, but 3M is hardly distinct. The ambulatory legs are relatively stout; the merus of P5 is about twice as long as broad. The palm of the chelipeds and the ambulatory legs are without carinae. In life, the carapace is vividly coloured by zones of violet mixed with others of rose-white, reddish-orange dots of variable sizes are surrounded by small clear halos and are distributed on some parts of the dorsal face as well as on the ventral face. Size: 30 x 40 mm. (Serène, 1984)
Type locality: Mauritius.
Range: Red Sea (Klunzinger, 1913); Madagascar - Nosy Bé and Fort-Dauphin (Serène, 1984); Mauritius (Alcock, 1898, Bouvier, 1915b, Michel, 1964); Chagos Archipelago; Sri Lanka (Alcock, 1898); Japan - Muroto-misaki (Sakai, 1977); China - Paracel Islands (Dai & Yang, 1991); Indonesia - Ambon and Noordwachter Island (de Man, 1887d); Australia - Endeavour River, Cooktown (Haswell, 1882b, c), North-West Islet, Capricorn Group (Ward, 1933a); New Caledonia; Fiji; Samoa (Alcock, 1898); Tahiti.