ILPLA   05424
INSTITUTO DE LIMNOLOGIA "DR. RAUL A. RINGUELET"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Contrasting activity patterns at high and low tide in two Brazilian fiddler crabs
Autor/es:
COSTA TANIA MARCIA; COLPO KARINE D.; QUEIROGA, HENRIQUE; CANNICCI, STEFANO; DE GRANDE FERNANDO
Revista:
JOURNAL OF CRUSTACEAN BIOLOGY
Editorial:
CRUSTACEAN SOC
Referencias:
Lugar: Lawrence, Kansas, USA; Año: 2018 vol. 38 p. 1 - 6
ISSN:
0278-0372
Resumen:
Fiddler crabs are known as ecosystem engineers as well as important connectors of energy flow between the intertidal zone and the adjacent marine and terrestrial environments, being predated by both marine and terrestrial species. Studies on their activity patterns are critical to understand their overall role in estuarine ecosystem functioning and in its energy flow. Although a large amount of literature has shown that most fiddler crabs are active at low tide, recent studies found that, in Brazil, fiddler crabs were the main food item of fish species actively hunting at high tide in intertidal areas, suggesting that some species could also be active at high tide. We assessed the activity patterns of two fiddler crabs, Leptuca leptodactyla (Rathbun, 1989) and L. thayeri (Rathbun, 1900) using pitfall traps deployed at different diurnal and tidal conditions at two southeast Brazilian estuaries. Our data shows that L. leptodactyla was mostly active at low tide during both the day and night, while L. thayeri was active at low and high tide, a behavior uncommonly reported for fiddler crabs. Our results also confirm that some fiddler crabs can have a previously unreported importance as food for aquatic species.