
A few years ago I was scuttling on the beach after a storm (as one does) and found a carapace of a crab I had never seen before! I pocketed it (as one does) and took it with me to Naturalis to check it out in more detail.

It turned out to be a carapace of the Horse crab Atelecyclus undecimdentatus, a species that was not yet reported for the Dutch coast. There were some citizen science records, but in all, findings were quite limited. In the years after this find, more kept popping up on Waarneming.nl. After winter storms, I would sometimes find bunches of them stranded within a few meters. I decided to dive into this funky little crab, check all records online and write a little report on it. This ended up as a neat little short communication. It’s free to download and read here: https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685403-bja10421. Be sure to check it out for the neat maps made by my co-author and of course for my taxonomy-yapping!
