Abstract The natural history and conservation status of the West Indian endemic freshwater crabs of the genus Epilobocera are poorly known. Several species have restricted distributions and apparently specific ecological requirements, which make them particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic threats. Epilobocera capolongoi is known to occur exclusively in mountain streams and rivers above 300 m elevation in the Guamuhaya Massif, central Cuba. In addition to the publication with the original description, there is only one paper exclusively on this species, which reported it as being preyed upon by a heron and recorded it from some additional localities in the vicinity of Topes de Collantes, provinces of Cienfuegos and Sancti Spíritus. Epilobocera capolongoi is herein reported from Pico San Juan Ecological Reserve and Lomas de Banao Ecological Reserve, which expands its geographic range to about 60 km and its elevation to 1,000 m. The species was found living sympatric with the congeneric Epilobocera cubensis poliorcetes in Lomas de Banao Ecological Reserve, but apparently there exists some habitat segregation between them. Some phenotypic characters important to distinguish both species are described, some basic data on their natural history are provided, and an assessment of the conservation status of E. capolongoi following current IUCN criteria is made.

Abstract A body entirely covered with long and sharp-pointed spines makes Acanthoniscus spiniger Gosse, 1851, one of the rarest and most ornamented terrestrial isopods in the world. The original description of this species was based on a single specimen collected by the British naturalist Philip Henry Gosse in Jamaica in 1845 and deposited in the British Museum (currently The Natural History Museum, London). A second specimen, presumably of this species, was collected by the American entomologist Henry Guernsey Hubbard in 1877 and deposited in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, which served as the basis for a further description by Richardson (1909). After Gosse and Hubbard specimens, no additional material appears to have reached any museum collection. Due to the scarce available information on this genus, it has been indistinctly placed in at least four different families through history, without a consensus on its definitive placement to date. Herein, we describe a new species of Acanthoniscus Gosse, 1851, based on a population discovered in the Blue Mountains, Jamaica, above 1,200 m elevation and more than 150 km eastward of A. spiniger’s type locality. We also emend the authorship and diagnoses of the genus Acanthoniscus and its type species. Finally, we discuss the possible relationships of Acanthoniscus at the family level, concluding that, despite some putative autapomorphies, it belongs to Armadillidae, as its present-day status.