Species Cherax rotundus Clark, 1941

Museums

Regional Maps

• Cherax rotundus Clark, E. 1941. New species of Australian freshwater and land crayfishes (Family Parastacidae). Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne 12: 31-40 [34].

  Type data:

   Syntype(s) NMV J11624, Muddy Creek, Severn, QLD [Severnlea, south of Stanthorpe, on the Severn River]
  Comment: the type locality cannot be precisely be located (O'Brien et al. 2009), although Riek (1969) provided a correction to the original one.

  Type locality references:

  Riek, E.F. 1969. The Australian freshwater crayfish (Crustacea: Decapoda: Parastacidae), with descriptions of new species. Australian Journal of Zoology 17: 855-918; O’Brien, A., Coughran, J. & McCormack, R.B. 2009. On the existence of Cherax rotundus in the Severn area, south-eastern Queensland. Queensland Naturalist 47((4-6)): 41-51.

 

Taxonomic Decision for Synonymy

• Riek, E.F. 1969. The Australian freshwater crayfish (Crustacea: Decapoda: Parastacidae), with descriptions of new species. Australian Journal of Zoology 17: 855-918 [902]

 

Distribution

States

New South Wales, Queensland

Extra Distribution Information

Australian Endemic.

IBRA and IMCRA regions

drainage basins and coastal and oceanic zones

IBRA

NSW, Qld: Brigalow Belt South (BBS), Darling Riverine Plains (DRP), Mulga Lands (ML), Nandewar (NAN), NSW North Coast (NNC), Sydney Basin (SB), South East Corner (SEC), South Eastern Queensland (SEQ)

Original AFD Distribution Data

Australian Region

• Australia
  • New South Wales: SE coastal
  • Queensland: Murray-Darling basin

Ecological Descriptors

Burrower, freshwater, freshwater.

 

General References

Austin, C.M. 1996. Systematics of the freshwater crayfish genus Cherax Erichson (Decapoda: Parastacidae) in northern and eastern Australia: electrophoretic and morphological variation. Australian Journal of Zoology 44: 259-296 (also considered that the type locality given by Clark (1941) may be erroneous as, subsequently, it has not been collected from this locality; p. 280 notes that C. rotundus is only now known from the environs of Newcastle, NSW; on the basis of electrophoretic data, he also suggested that this should be a subspecies of C. destructor)

Sokol, A. 1988. Morphological variation in relation to the taxonomy of the destructor Group of the genus Cherax. Invertebrate Taxonomy 2: 55-79 [71, 72] (considered that the type locality given by Clark (1941) may be erroneous as it has not been subsequently collected from this locality; also noted a number of significant morphological differences between the two nominal species and did not support synonymising the two taxa)

 

History of changes

Published	As part of group	Action Date	Action Type	Compiler(s)
05-Dec-2019	DECAPODA Latreille, 1802	08-Aug-2018	MODIFIED	Dr Shane Ahyong
29-May-2012		29-May-2012	MOVED
20-Oct-2011		20-Oct-2011	MODIFIED
		03-Jun-2010	MODIFIED