Environmental Studies Commons^™

The Role Of Adult Fiddler Crab Environmental Acoustic Cues And Chemical Cues In Stimulating Molting Of Field-Caught Megalopae, Emily E. Waddell, Wendy Dow Piniak, Kathleen A. Reinsel, James M. Welch

Student Publications

In mid-Atlantic estuaries, three fiddler crab species, Uca pugilator, Uca pugnax and Uca minax co-occur, with their adults occupying different habitat types distinguished by salinity and sediment size. Some evidence exists that selective settlement is responsible for this separation but the mechanism is largely unknown. We tested the hypothesis that field-caught megalopae would accelerate metamorphosis in the presence of adult species-specific environmental acoustic cues and conspecific chemical cues. We placed megalopae in seawater with and without adult chemical cues, exposed them to one of three sound treatments for 8 days, and recorded the time each megalopa took to metamorphose. In …