JMT's crab species evaluation

[JediMasterThrash]

I've decided to place the conclusion at the top instead of the bottom, to facilitate quicker reference to this thread. But naturally follow the information in the second half of this post to see where my opinion is coming from. I do not doubt that in the future, this conclusion will change, and I continue to welcome new information.Ok, so JMT's official opinion is:American species:C. clypeatusC. compressusAussie species:C. variabilisIndian ocean species:C. rugosusC. cavipesC. brevimanusWest Pacific species:C. spinosusC. perlatusJapanese species:C. purpureusC. violascensPotentially unique variations of rugosus:C. scaevolaC. psuedorugosusDefunct species:C. olivieri = perlatus and violascensC. carnescens = perlatusC. longitarsis = Clibanarius longitarsis (marine hermit crab)C. rubescens = rugosusNotes:* When you pluralize the species, change the "us" to an "a", such as "rugosa".* Species names are lowercase after the capitalized genus.* Coenobita is pronounced "see'-nuh-bahyt-ah" or "see-nuh-bit'-ah".* Ecuadorian is pronounced "ek-wuh-dawr-yuhn"* There are only 12 (or 10, depending on your point of view) species of coenobita, not the 13 still listed everywhere.It's been several years since I last found and posted this research article. Since then, all my related posts have disappeared off the message boards and I could never find them again, and have had to try to remember the details out of memory.But I found it again:http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/NHM/3Zoo/PM_PD.pdfAnd here's the skinny:C. olivieri is defunct. They were misidentified perlatus and violascensAnd these specimins of C.olivieri were misidentified spinosus:http://decapoda.free.fr/fiche.php?sp=185However, I think we may have been wrong about C. scaevola. They are reminiscent of white ruggies, and we originally said the scaevola were misidentified rugosus. However they appear to only live on the siani penninsula, and are specifically adapted to very dry, hot desert conditions on those beecheshttp://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/25/m025p189.pdfThe only known picture of a scaevola that floats around is a picture of a variabilis, so really we have no known pictures of a scaevola to make an identification from. My assumption is that the look similar to white rugosus, if they are not in fact just rugosus.There are listed variations of rugosus (and as anyone who's had a few rugosus knows, there seems to be some variations, like the darker greener harrier, versus the lighter, neon ones, however, my rugosus always seem to change color every molt). This site references a variation granulosa.Additional non-unique species that are probably rugosus includes rubescens and pseudorugosus (rugosus understandably would have initially had several different species attributions due to the vast variety of hair and color variances. Only now that we keep them captive can we observe that these variations are caused by diet and growth).http://coenobitaresearch.blogspot.com/2 ... fo.htmlBut pseudorugosus, like scaevola, is still today regularly referred to as unique from rugosus, so it's possible that at least to scientists they are unique, even if we can't yet tell the difference (it would help if we had pictures!)http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps200 ... ditionally, while originally C. variabilis is actually C spinosus var. variabilis (a variation of spinosus), it appears that initial discovery misidentified juevenile spinosus as a different species, and called them variation variabilis. But now we know that this specimins were just young spinosus, and the other newer specimens were given the name variabilis. The crabs we now know as variabilis are too different from spinosus (though you can see similarities in stucture) to be classified as a variation in my opinion. Both spinosus and variabilis are aussie crabs.C. carnescens are misidentified juvenile perlatus.http://decapoda.free.fr/fiche.php?sp=183Initially, a lot of brevimanus specimens were misidentified as clypeatus, until they were given their unique species ID.C. longitarsis only has one ID from a hundred years ago, and was never IDed again. It's from the east indies, so it probably was just what later became known as a cavipe.However, I found a reference to claiming to questioning whether longitarsis was terrestrial, since it was from an indonesia river, and found this site:http://www.duniasatwa.com/forums/showth ... age=2Which seems to confirm that longitarsis is a marine hermit crab, and is not terrestrial. And we finally have a picture of a Clibanarius longitarsis!

[JediMasterThrash]

The coconut crab (birgus latro) is the only one that is endangered. None of the other species are in immediate danger of become endangered, but continued destruction of beaches and shores by humans poses the greatest long-term threat.The best activism to do is cleaning the native beaches, and stoping anything that dumps garbage into the ocean.I do see the mass collection of shells being detrimental to hermit crabs. The HCA in the past has collected shells from members and redeposited them on beaches.