Aquaculture and Fisheries Commons^™

Project Limulus: Understanding And Conserving A Critical Natural Resource, Jennifer H. Mattei

Jennifer Mattei

Mattei, fellow SHU associate professor of Biology, Dr. Mark Beekey, and many other devoted biologists and conservationists are deeply committed to studying and preserving Limulus polyphemus – the American horseshoe crab. A concerted effort is now under way to locate, count and tag horseshoe crabs – whose numbers have declined since the early 1990s. The crabs are considered to be both a dominant and a “keystone” species of the intertidal zone. Their greatest value to humankind is that the blood of Limulus has an amazing property: It contains unique blood cells (amebocytes) that are used to test human vaccines for …