A New Crawfish of the Genus Cambarellus from Texas, with New Texas Distributional Records for the Genus (Decapoda, Astacidae)

Discovery of Cambarellus texanus, from the Gulf coastal plain of southeastern Texas, helps clarify relationships within the genus. New distributional records for the three species previously known from Texas include 15 new county records. Two females of the species described below have been in the collections at Tulane University (TU P-649) since 1941, but they were conjecturally identified as Cambarellus puer. Penn and Hobbs (Texas J. Sci. 10: 452-483, 1958) listed an erroneous locality for C. puer based on these specimens, collected in Matagorda County, 4 mi S of Bay City. The new species was first recognized as such by the junior author, who collected it in Jackson and Matagorda Counties in 1966. Adequate material for study was not obtained until 1972, when the senior author found it in two additional counties. Discovery of this crawfish, a relative of Cambarellus ninae and an associate of C. puer over part of its range, helps define the relationship between the latter two species, which formerly was held in question (Hobbs, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington 63: 89-96, 1950). Reports on the distribution of Cambarellus in Texas have been few (Hobbs, Amer. Midl. Nat. 34: 466-474, 1945; Hobbs, 1950; Penn and Hobbs, 1958). The localities reported here, based on collections made by the authors, constitute major extensions of the known ranges of the three species previously recorded from Texas. Cambarellus texanus new species Cambarellus puer.-Penn and Hobbs, 1958, p. 475, fig. 67 (in part).