(Forskål, 1775)
The dorsal surface of the carapace is smooth or granular, less convex, and with the regions well or slightly defined. The chelipeds have the anterior margin of the merus smooth or granular and with or without a protuberance or proximal spine; the palms are not very elongated. The cheliped merus has a protuberance or a proximal spine on the anterior margin. The carapace has the dorsal surface smooth, without the regions distinctly indicated. The antero-lateral margins of the carapace have, behind the orbital angle, four teeth of which some are nearly obsolete but never fused with one another into a convex, elongated lobe. The antero-lateral margins of the carapace have tooth 1 often very reduced but the three others are always well developed, although often represented as blunt lobes in large specimens. The ambulatory legs have numerous, plumose setae. (Serène, 1984)
Type locality: Djiddah.
Range: Red Sea - (Kossmann, 1877, Klunzinger, 1913), Abulat (Guinot, 1964b); east coast of Africa - Zanzibar, Natal; Ile Europa (Serène, 1984); Mayotte (Guinot, 1958); Madagascar - Nosy Bé and Tuléar (Serène, 1984); Mauritius (Michel, 1964); Seychelles (Rathbun, 1911); Persian Gulf (Stephensen, 1945); Chagos Archipelago (Rathbun, 1911); Pakistan - Makran coast (Alcock, 1898); Bay of Bengal (Chopra & Das, 1937); Andaman Islands (Alcock, 1898); Nicobar Islands (Alcock, 1898); Mergui Archipelago (Alcock, 1898, Chopra & Das, 1937); Japan - Amami-Oshima (Ortmann, 1893), Ogasawara-shoto and Okinawa (Stimpson, 1907), Okinawa (Sakai, 1939), Sagami Bay (Sakai, 1965b), Sagami Bay, Amami-shoto, and Yaeyama-retto (Sakai, 1976a), Nanki Shirahama (Miyake, 1983), Ashizuri-misaki, Amami-Oshima, Yoron-jima, and Ishigaki-jima (Muraoka, 1998), Okukubi River, Okinawa (Shokita et al., 1998), Ginowan, Okinawa (Shokita et al., 2000); Taiwan - Su-ao (Lin, 1949); China - Hainan Island (Shen, 1936, 1940), Hainan Island and Paracel Islands (Chen & Lan, 1978, Dai & Yang, 1991); Malaysia - Kelantan (Lanchester, 1902); Philippines - Cruz Island, Mindanao and Burias Island (Garth & Kim, 1983); Sulu Sea (Dana, 1852); Balabac Strait (Dana, 1852); Palau (Sakai, 1939, Takeda & Hayashi, 1973); Indonesia - Edam Island and Ambon (de Man, 1887d), west Celebes; New Britain - Kokopo near Rabaul (Takeda & Nunomura, 1976); Solomon Islands - Guadalcanal Island and Saddle Island (Takeda & Nunomura, 1976); Australia - North-West Island, off Rockhampton (Rathbun, 1923a); New Caledonia - Ilot Maitre, Ile des Pins and Poum (Takeda & Nunomura, 1976); Wake Island (Dana, 1852); Kiribati; Fiji (Dana, 1852); Samoa (Dana, 1852); Tongatabu (Dana, 1852); Hawaiian Islands - southcoast of Molokai, Honolulu, weather coast of Hawaii, and Laysan (Rathbun, 1906); Line Islands - Palmyra and Tabuaeran (Edmondson, 1923); Tahiti (Stimpson, 1907); Tuamotu Archipelago - Makatea (Sendler, 1923).