Nematopalaemon karnafuliensis (Ali Azam Khan, Fincham & Mahmood, 1980) (Decapoda:Caridea:Palaemonidae) a New Record to India

The genus Nematopalaemon Holthuis, 1950 encompasses five species namely Nematopalaemon colombiensis (Squires & Mora L., 1971), Nematopalaemon hastatus (Aurivillius, 1898), Nematopalaemon karnafuliensis (Ali Azam Khan, Fincham & Mahmood, 1980), Nematopalaemon schmitti (Holthuis, 1950b) and Nematopalaemon tenuipes (Henderson, 1893). Out of the five species of Nematopalaemon described so far, the spider prawn Nematopalaemon tenuipes is available in Northwest, South & Northeast coasts of India (Kemp, 1917, Jayachandran, 2001, Radhakrishnan et al., 2012), and it occupies a prominent place among the nonpenaeid shrimp resources of the north-west coast (Kizhakudan and Deshmukh, 2009). Ali Azam Khan, Fincham& Mahmood, 1980 described Nematopalaemon karnafuliensis(=Palaemon (Nematopalaemon) karnafuliensis) from Karnafuli Estuary, Chittagong, Bangladesh and this species is so far not reported outside its type locality. While studying the unidentified caridean shrimps accumulated in the National Zoological collections of Crustacea Section, Zoological Survey of India, five examples of Nematopalaemon karnafuliensis were noticed among the other caridean shrimps namely Exopalaemon styliferus (H.M. Edwards, 1840) and Exhippolysmata ensirostris ensirostris (Kemp, 1914) collected from Daman during the Gujarat Coastal survey in 1992 by H.C. Ghose. It forms a first report of the species from India after its description from the type locality.