I am an old time member from my youth (lost that account!) and have had hermits for a very long time (15+yrs!). This semester, I am in a senior level college Animal Behavior course. For our semester project, we had to create and execute research either at the zoo or on any "non-domesticated animal". I decided to design my research around the competition behaviors of hermit crabs. And I could use some additional data.
Here is the setup:
I put a mix of sometimes novel, sometimes routine foods in every afternoon and watch for any takers. Then, I record the feeding behaviors from the start until their "tactic" is ascertained. Tactics are categorized as "avoidance" based resource acquisition-- a hermit crab either avoiding contact with others to grab food or grabbing food and running away with it OR "conflict" based resource acquisition, which includes jostling, chirping, fighting, or any definitive physical contact without withdrawal. I am considering "neutral" behavior in which only one is feeding at a time, since mine have recently not been feeding together (which is unusual for crabs in general but mine in particular). I am correlating this with species, sex, and size of the crabs. I have sexed each crab, measured shield leg width when walking from one leg to another, measured shell aperture, and recorded species and shell type. This way, I can say: medium female C. compressus grabbed a piece of food and ran to a secluded spot to eat. I will likely use names to differentiate, but this will be analyzed with statistical methods.
Why am I posting this here?? Well, I am limited in my sample size. I have a large tank-135g- with only about 9 crabs. Currently, many of mine are down to molt. The ones who are up...lets just say that they seem spoiled and quite lazy about feeding.
I am reaching out here to see if anyone is willing to video the feeding behavior of their crabs and possibly take the sex, leg, and shell type/aperture size measurements to contribute to the data. Any species is fine, so long as you know these data points. I can distinguish between most species but only have C. compressus and C. clypeatus myself. Either embedding a link to a youtube upload or other site with your video would be appreciated. I realize this is a lot to ask--but I figured there would be no better group of enthusiasts to bring this to! This research will likely not be published, but the following question of "What factors influence their feeding tactics" is absolutely a phD or master's thesis worthy question per my accomplished professor. This is essentially a baseline for further research. Credit will be given to anyone participating, and I will provide you with a copy of my research paper.
If anyone is willing, please let me know! I have read many scientific articles about hermit crabs...but there are truly underrepresented in the literature. If anyone simply wishes to say a good luck, feel free to say hello! I can also post the more term heavy description of my research proposal, if anyone is curious
Samantha
