Scientist discovers a new crab species

Named Areopaguristes tudgei after Christopher Tudge from the American University in Washington, the tiny hermit crab differs from others in its genus by hair growing on its appendages and has joined the list of about 3 million known species.

Christopher Tudge, a biology professor at American University in Washington, has collected specimens all over the world, from Australia to Europe to North and South America.

Until now, he has never had a species named after him. He only found out about his namesake after reading an article about it in the journal Zootaxa.

The two crustacean taxonomists, who named the new crab after Tudge, Rafael Lemaitre and Darryl L Felder have known Tudge since he first came to Washington in 1995 as a postdoc research fellow at the Smithsonian.

Lemaitre and Felder have been collecting specimens on the tiny Belizean island for decades and for more than 10 years, they had asked Tudge