INVESTIGADORES
RIBEIRO Pablo Damian
artículos
Título:
Sex specific response to disturbance in a fiddler crab
Autor/es:
PABLO D. RIBEIRO; CAROLINA LUCHETTI; OSCAR O. IRIBARNE
Revista:
JOURNAL OF SHELLFISH RESEARCH
Editorial:
National Shellfisheries Association
Referencias:
Año: 2003 vol. 22 p. 251 - 254
ISSN:
0730-8000
Resumen:
Fiddler crabs are organism with an extreme sexual dimorphism. Male crabs have an enlarged claw used for sexual display and combat but not for feeding, which place them in foraging disadvantage when are compared with females. Given that avoiding disturbance (e.g., predators or human activity), courting and feeding are incompatible behaviors, males should have different time budget to balance all the activities. In this study we experimentally evaluated the hypothesis that males of the Southwestern Atlantic fiddler crab Uca uruguayensis have a sex specific response to disturbance. We performed an experiment where we applied an artificial disturbance (created by addition of flags). During a tidal cycle we found that males were more affected by disturbance than females. During the ebb tide, more males than females remained into their burrows due to the artificial disturbance. After disturbance (i.e. when flags were removed) the male to female sex ratio on the surface increased in disturbed plots. However, once disturbance was interrupted the male to female sex ratio on previously disturbed plots differed from the observed in control plots, being smaller during the ebb tide and larger during the flood tide. The latter might indicate that male crabs increase their foraging effort to compensate the time they loss for feeding as consequence of disturbance. Disturbance also affected the proportion of courting males, but when disturbance was removed courtship returned to initial values of activity, which indicates that the cost of stop courting may be higher than cost of stop feeding. However, after 27-day of experimental disturbance comparison of body condition (dry weight in relation to their carapace width) showed no effect of disturbance, suggesting that males were able to compensate the decrease in feeding time.
