Any safe haven?

Over the past month, I’ve packed up my belongings and then unpacked them again as I moved between apartments. That got me thinking about animals that travel with their ‘house’, and so my topic for this month’s posts is hermit crabs. This is a topic that is pretty well unknown to me.

 

Photo by USFWS Southeast Region

Photo by USFWS Southeast Region

During a short period in my adolescence, I and my brother had ‘pet’ hermit crabs (if you can really call them pets); I don’t remember getting much out of that relationship. I see large numbers of hermit crabs when I’m doing field work on Louisiana’s islands, especially in the marshes, but I don’t know if those numbers have fluctuated recently. Some of my friends study the taxonomic relationships of specific hermit crab species, and so I know that there are some fierce debates raging about how to classify certain hermit crabs, but that really doesn’t tell me about the conservation status of these animals.

 
Because of their size and ability to blend into their surroundings, I think that hermit crabs can be easy to overlook (until you step on something that starts to move…), but my guess is that they play important roles in various ecosystems, and I imagine that global climate change could cause some problems for these animals as oceans warm and acidify. So this month you’ll get a chance to learn a bit about crustacean conservation and options for getting involved in their preservation.