Discorsopagurus schmitti is a ‘non-conventional’ hermit crab in that it adopts as shelters the fixed tubes produced by the worm Sabellaria cementarium Moore. Experiments carried out in northern Puget Sound (Washington, USA) showed that (1) tubes are limiting resources, (2) both exploitative and interference competition comes into play when the sources of tubes are conspecifics, (3) residents strongly defend their housings from invaders, mostly using visual patterns and (4) change of tubes is related more to the activities of feeding than to growth. Free-choice experiments in the laboratory revealed that adult hermits would prefer to live in loose tubes. On the one hand, a mobile life increases hermit crabs’ foraging efficiency, at least within laboratory conditions. On the other hand, tubes are more fragile than gastropod shells and thus tube-dwelling hermits are more easily eaten by predators (especially brachyurans) than those housed in shells. On the premise of a shell-dwelling ancestry of Discorsopagurus schmitti, one possible scenario is that, in evolutionary time, this hermit was displaced from gastropod shells to worm tubes by more competitive species. In tubes, however, D. schmitti makes now ‘the best of a bad situation’.

Non-conventional hermit crabs: pros and cons of sessile, tube-dwelling life in Discorsopagurus schmitti (Stevens) / F. GHERARDI. - In: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MARINE BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY. - ISSN 0022-0981. - STAMPA. - 202:(1996), pp. 119-136. [10.1016/0022-0981(96)00024-X]

Non-conventional hermit crabs: pros and cons of sessile, tube-dwelling life in Discorsopagurus schmitti (Stevens).

GHERARDI, FRANCESCA
1996

Abstract

Discorsopagurus schmitti is a ‘non-conventional’ hermit crab in that it adopts as shelters the fixed tubes produced by the worm Sabellaria cementarium Moore. Experiments carried out in northern Puget Sound (Washington, USA) showed that (1) tubes are limiting resources, (2) both exploitative and interference competition comes into play when the sources of tubes are conspecifics, (3) residents strongly defend their housings from invaders, mostly using visual patterns and (4) change of tubes is related more to the activities of feeding than to growth. Free-choice experiments in the laboratory revealed that adult hermits would prefer to live in loose tubes. On the one hand, a mobile life increases hermit crabs’ foraging efficiency, at least within laboratory conditions. On the other hand, tubes are more fragile than gastropod shells and thus tube-dwelling hermits are more easily eaten by predators (especially brachyurans) than those housed in shells. On the premise of a shell-dwelling ancestry of Discorsopagurus schmitti, one possible scenario is that, in evolutionary time, this hermit was displaced from gastropod shells to worm tubes by more competitive species. In tubes, however, D. schmitti makes now ‘the best of a bad situation’.
1996
202
119
136
F. GHERARDI
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/592549
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