Flattened legs banded in orange and red, living almost only in dead cone shells.
A hermit crab of about 5 cm with legs and claws that are strikingly flattened, broad and strap-like, banded across their length in bright orange-red and pale yellow-orange so that the whole animal looks lacquered. The eyestalks are pale with red corneas. No other hermit in the region combines that flattening with the even transverse banding, and the flattening is not decoration: it matches the narrow slit-shaped aperture of a cone shell, and the crab lives almost exclusively in dead Conus shells, which most hermits cannot use because their bodies will not fit the opening.
Nocturnal on rubble and coarse sand, wedged into a crevice or under a slab by day and out in the open after dark. It grazes algae and detritus and scavenges. Recorded from about 3 to 30 m, commonest on rubble at the edge of a slope rather than on open silt. Because the shell is a cone, an occupied shell lying on rubble at night is worth a second look before it is written off as a live cone snail, and the banded legs showing at the aperture settle the question at once. When disturbed the crab withdraws and the flat claws close the opening flush, so the shell becomes sealed and gives nothing away.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.