Carrying behavior in the deep-sea crab Paromola cuvieri (Northeast Atlantic)
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Carrying behavior in the deep-sea crab Paromola cuvieri (Northeast Atlantic) Andreia Braga-Henriques & Marina Carreiro-Silva & Fernando Tempera & Filipe Mora Porteiro & Kirsten Jakobsen & Joachim Jakobsen & Mónica Albuquerque & Ricardo Serrão Santos
Received: 29 November 2010 / Revised: 23 January 2011 / Accepted: 24 February 2011 / Published online: 5 April 2011 # Senckenberg, Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer 2011
Abstract Observations of deep-sea homolids are becoming more common, but good-resolution imagery of these crabs in the natural environment is still scarce. Sixteen new in situ observations of Paromola cuvieri from various locations within the central and eastern groups of the Azores Archipelago (Northeast Atlantic) are described here based on video footage collected by two submersible vehicles. Crabs were found on coral gardens and deep-sea sponge aggregations, which are priority habitats of conservation importance under OSPARCOM. Diverse sessile megafauna were recorded (>59 taxa), including sponges, hydroids, corals, brachiopods, crinoids and oysters. Overall, 75% of the crabs were carrying live specimens of sessile invertebrates, mainly sponges and cold-water corals. Object selection shows to be a more complex process than previously thought, in which factors such as morphology, size and weight of objects and also palatability seem to be Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12526-011-0090-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. A. Braga-Henriques (*) : M. Carreiro-Silva : F. Tempera : F. M. Porteiro : R. Serrão Santos Department of Oceanography and Fisheries, IMAR/DOP-University of the Azores, 9901–862 Horta, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] K. Jakobsen : J. Jakobsen Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation, Rocha Vermelha, Apt. 249, Praia do Almoxarife, 9900–909 Horta, Portugal M. Albuquerque Portuguese Task Group for the Extension of the Continental Shelf (EMEPC), Rua Costa Pinto 165, 2770–047 Paço de Arcos, Portugal
more important in the process of object selection than their availability. Keywords Homolidae . Habitat . Camouflage . Anti-predator defense . Azores . Video
Introduction The crab species Paromola cuvieri (Risso, 1816) belongs to the family Homolidae de Haan, 1839, which encompasses more than 14 genera and 62 species (Guinot and Richer de Forges 1995; Ng 1998; Ng and Chen 1999; Richer de Forges and Ng 2007, 2008). This species is known to occur in the Atlantic Ocean, from the Hebrides and southern Scandinavia south to Angola, including the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands, the Tripp Seamount, and the Mediterranean, at depths between 10 and more than −1,000 m (usually deeper than 150 m) (Manning and Holthuis 1981; Guinot and Richer de Forges 1995). Guinot and Richer de Forges (1981) and Wicksten (1985, 1986) inferred carrying behavior in all species of the family Homolidae based on pereiopod morphology of the crabs. It consists of lifting or holding sessile animals or shells d
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