Marratha
Encyclopedia
Marratha angusta is a species of crab
Crab
True crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax...

s in the family Xanthidae
Xanthidae
Xanthidae is a family of crabs known as mud crabs, pebble crabs or rubble crabs. They are often brightly coloured and are poisonous, containing toxins which are not destroyed by cooking and for which no antidote is known...

, the only species in the genus Marratha. It was originally described
Alpha taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms. This field is supported by institutions holding collections of these organisms, with relevant data, carefully curated: such institutes include natural history museums, herbaria and...

 as Cycloxanthops angustus by Mary J. Rathbun in 1906, but was moved to a new genus in 2003; the name of the genus, Marratha is an "arbitrary abbreviation" of Rathbun's name. It has been recorded from the Amirante Islands
Amirante Islands
The Amirante Islands , a group of coral islands and atolls, belong to the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. They stretch about 155 km from the African Banks in the north to Île Desnœufs in the south, all on the shallow Amirantes Bank , except the main island Île Desroches in...

 (Seychelles
Seychelles
Seychelles , officially the Republic of Seychelles , is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar....

), Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

 and the South China Sea
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...

.
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