Coral Banded Shrimp are some of the most common and great species of reef shrimp that you can put in a saltwater or reef aquarium. The most common species, the red & white Stenopus hispidus will be instantly recognizable to experienced aquarists and novices alike, but there’s some rare species that occasionally show up including the blue coral banded and gold coral banded shrimp, less often the mostly white cave shrimp.
But aside from the close relatives of the common Coral Banded Shrimp, there’s some other groups which are never really found in the saltwater aquarium world, but that’s not stopping them from being discovered and described by crustacean taxonomists. The latest coral shrimp relatives to be given proper classification are two new species of Odontozona shrimp, O. stigmatica and O. arbur.
Besides their general body shape and their manner of holding their pinching claws, the shrimp of the Odontozona genus share a similar red and white color motif as Stenopus, albeit not as brightly colored and not nearly as large and conspicuous underwater. Odontozona stigmatica is described based on just a single type specimen from Ishigaki Island, Ryukyu Archipelago, southern Japan and is a light orange overall with small peachy red covering most of its carapace.
Odontozona arbur is much more abundant being found from Australia to Japan and is very similar to O. stigmatica but more red than peach and with much more noticeable white tipped claws. These two new additions bring the total number of species in the Odontozona genus to 19 with O. arbur and O. stigmatica being described by Saito, Okuno & Anker in the 46th Volume of Crustacean Research.
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