Vol. 16, no. 3
June/July 2013
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Crustacea Fantastica (Page 6) |
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Unidentified crawling object: This crab was collected in October 2006 from the tropical reefs at French Frigate Shoals, where Middleton traveled as part of a research team focused on marine invertebrates. The team collected from a variety of habitats—tidepools, shallow inshore reefs, deep water—using a number of techniques: baited lobster traps, suction tubes and plain old looking. This crab, collected from a baited trap sunk in waters deeper than a hundred feet, was a stranger to everyone when it emerged from the deep and is likely a new species in the genus Aniculus. At this point there are approximately 1,100 known species of hermit crabs, though others undoubtedly exist in the wild. “Marine invertebrates tend to be understudied and less known,” says Middleton. “There’s speculation that the true number of hermit crab species is somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000, but so little is actually known compared to other animal groups.” Working on-site Middleton has photographed wild hermit crabs in three locales: San Juan Island in the Pacific Northwest, the Line Islands in the equatorial Pacific and the French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
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