Aratus (crab)

Aratus is a neotropical genus of tree-climbing mangrove crabs in the serarmid family. The genus was first described by Henri Milne-Edwards in 1853, by separating A. pisonii (from genus Sesarma) into its own monotypic genus.^[1] Aratus has a range spanning Baja California and Sonora, south to Peru along the east Pacific, and from Florida to Brazil in the west Atlantic.^[2] Though there has long been attempts to distinguish the Atlantic and Pacific populations of Aratus into separate taxa, it was not until 2014 that sufficient genetic and morphological evidence was collected for the Pacific population to be described as a distinct species.^[1]

Aratus
Aratus pacificus Costa Rica
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Malacostraca
Order:	Decapoda
Suborder:	Pleocyemata
Infraorder:	Brachyura
Family:	Sesarmidae
Genus:	Aratus H. Milne-Edwards, 1853

Species

• Aratus pisonii (H. Milne-Edwards, 1837)
• Aratus pacificus Thiercelin & Schubart, 2014