Supporting data for "A micro X-ray computed tomography dataset of South African hermit crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura: Paguroidea)"

Along with the conventional deposition of physical types at natural history museums, the deposition of three-dimensional (3D) image data has been proposed for rare and valuable museum specimens, such as irreplaceable type material. Micro computed tomography (CT) scan data of five hermit crab species from South Africa, two of rare specimens, three of holotypic specimens, and two of selected paratypes, depicted main identification characters of calcified body parts. However, low image contrasts, especially in larger (>50 mm total length) specimens did not allow sufficient 3D reconstructions of weakly calcified or fine characters, such as soft tissue of the pleon, mouthparts, gills, or of the setation. Reconstructions of soft tissue were sometimes possible, depending on individual sample and scanning characteristics. The raw data of seven scans are publicly available for download from the GigaDB repository.
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