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Buzzy Sproat on the trail to Kalaupapa Photo by Richard A. Cooke, III
Vol. 7, No. 2
April/May 2004
  

Crustacea Fantastica (Page 2)
House beautiful: “A house,” the great architect Le Corbusier once said, “is a machine for living in”— and it’s a machine that’s particularly streamlined when it comes to the hermit crab. Hermits need their houses for one simple reason: protection. Unlike shrimp and crabs, whose bodies are entirely covered by a hard exoskeleton, hermit crabs evolved with a soft and vulnerable abdomen that they must safeguard— hence the need for a dwelling. The crab’s twisted abdomen can be curled or flattened to fit neatly into the whorls of a shell, and it has tiny appendages called uropods that allow it to hook on securely. “They have been very successful evolutionarily,” says Middleton. “That’s one of the things that drew me to them. A shrimp relies on speed and agility to survive. A hermit crab relies on armature and its ability to hide.” At right: Calcinus laevimanus, one of the most common hermit crabs in Hawai‘i’s shallow intertidal areas.

 
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