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Dorippe frascone

Species of crab

Summary

Species of crab

  • Cancer nodulosus Olivier, 1791

Dorippe frascone, the urchin crab or carrier crab, is a small species of crab in the family Dorippidae that was first described scientifically by J.F.W. Herbst, in 1785. It is found in the Red Sea and parts of the western and eastern Indian Ocean. It often has a symbiotic relationship with a long-spined sea urchin and carries one around on its carapace.

Description

The urchin crab is a brownish-pink colour and grows to a length of about 5 cm. It has long-stalked eyes, a rounded carapace and long, slender legs. It uses only the first two pairs of legs for locomotion because the third and fourth pairs are used to grip a sea urchin which it carries around on its back. It is similar in morphology to the jellyfish crab (Ethusa spp.) but is easily distinguished by the different invertebrate transported. It also resembles decorator crabs but those actually stick living creatures such as sponges, hydroids and bryozoans, bits of algae and inert objects to their shells.

Distribution

Dorippe frascone is found in the Red Sea and off the coast of East Africa, including Mozambique and Cargados Carajos, an atoll north east of Mauritius.

Ecology

The urchin crab is so called because of its habit of carrying a sea urchin on its carapace.

References

References

  1. Davie, Peter. (2012). "''Dorippe frascone'' (Herbst, 1785)".
  2. Massimo Boyer. "Urchin crab". SeaDB.
  3. (2011). "Animal Camouflage". [[Cambridge University Press]].
  4. Jonathan Bird. "Sea urchin crab". Jonathan Bird Productions.
  5. Maran, Vincent. (2010-11-11). "''Astropyga radiata'' (Leske, 1778)". DORIS.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

crabs crustaceans-described-in-1785
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