Cancer ballantei Curtiss, 1938 [toetoe] Cancer tenuicrustatus Herbst, 1783: 113. Cancer ballantei Curtiss, 1938: 174, n. syn. Cancer ballantei was observed to have “short, stiff, black bristles” on the ambulatory legs, the colour of the “body above is reddish, inclined to dull black, with many whitish dots”, and has a relative large size (“an inch and threequarters wide”) (Curtiss 1938: 173, 174). This description and colour pattern agrees very well with the other common cliff-dwelling supralittoral grapsid, Grapsus tenuicrustatus (Herbst, 1783) (see Poupin & Juncker 2010). Another species of Grapsus known from French Polynesia (but not yet from Tahiti) is G. longitarsis Dana, 1851, but it has a very different carapace colouration and is generally smaller (see Banerjee 1960; Poupin 1996; Ng 1998; Poupin & Juncker 2010). Poupin (1996) commented that the poorly known Grapsus depressus Heller, 1862, has never been seen since its description from French Polynesia and its taxonomy is uncertain, but it may be a species of Geograpsus (see Ng et al. 2008).

Published as part of Ng, Peter K. L., Eldredge, Lucius G. & Evenhuis, Neal L., 2011, The names of decapod and stomatopod Crustacea from Tahiti, French Polynesia, established by Anthony Curtiss in 1938 and 1944, pp. 43-56 in Zootaxa 3099 on page 50, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.206896