Category: Projects

A hoary rubble crab, Banareia palmeri, cutting off a branch tip of a sea rod, Pseudoplexaura sp., in the southern part of Bonaire (2024). Photo by L. Alev Ozten Low. (c) Ozten Low et al. 2025, in Diversity.

Look at this cute little guy! I collaborated on a nice short publication on the interaction between Banareia palmeri and some species of octocorals. This behaviour hasn’t been observed before, and who would have thought this little crab was capable of severing these thick coral branches? The center of these branches is really hard and rough to get through, so the chelipeds of this crab must be something really special..

It was my task to analyse the chelipeds and work out some taxonomy confusion (my favourite job.. really!). I found some specimens of this species in the Naturalis collection and put them under the microscope.

Ethanol-preserved museum specimens of Banareia palmeri showing habitus and claws: (a–c) small female (carapace 0.9 cm wide) from Bonaire, Lac Boca, behind the reef, October 1948 (RMNH.CRUS.D.8166); (d–f) large male (carapace 1.8 cm wide) from the Dominican Republic, SW of Isla Beata, 19 July 1970 (RMNH.CRUS.D.29064); (a,c) dorsal sides; (b,d) ventral sides; (c,f) close-ups showing the sharp-edged teeth of the saw-shaped inner edges of the claws. Photos by me. (c) Ozten Low et al. 2025, in Diversity.

If you zoom in on the chelipeds you see they are formed like scissors! The claws are relatively bulky but sharp. This explains how it can cut through the horny center of the corals.

Why they do this, we’re not really sure. We’d need to stick around and watch them while cutting, so see what they do with the severed pieces. It’s likely they eat the pieces. If so, you should be able to find the corals in the stomachs of the crab. Hopefully one day soon someone will observe more of this behaviour and write it down for us to read.

The article can be downloaded and read for free here: https://doi.org/10.3390/d17030144. Hope you enjoy!

Ozten Low, L.A.; Willems, M.; Hoeksema, B.W. The West Atlantic Hoary Rubble Crab, Banareia palmeri, Behaves Like a Corallivore. Diversity 2025, 17, 144. https://doi.org/10.3390/d17030144

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!

Publication news! Together with Jeroen (https://science.jeroenhubert.nl/) & Judith I wrote a paper on experimental design in underwater acoustic research. One of my Marine Biology degree projects was a two month literature review, and I really wanted to dive into a topic new to me. I approached Jeroen, he had some great ideas and we got started! I have read over 500 papers for this review, scored around 100 on different topics. We mainly show that it is important to present your research results in an objective manner. Some researchers play a sound of a boat to an animal in captivity, and then state that all boats cause a specific reaction to all animals of this species. But of course there are many types of boats! And not all animals show the same reaction! It is very difficult to study the effect of sound on underwater animals in the wild, so laboratory research is really important, and we are happy so much nice work has been done already. But I hope that if colleagues read our results, they will agree and incorporate small difference to make their work even better! The DOI is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.07.005 Thank you so much to Jeroen & Judith for the guidance, all that I have learned in a very short time span, and the opportunity to publish our results.

It’s always cool to see your name in print.. here is the newest Crustaceana, with a little contribution by me. 🦐

During my second master’s internship at Naturalis, I identified over a thousand of crabs from Inhaca Island, Mozambique. Between the countless crabs I sometimes found a shrimp.. which I of course quickly passed on to my advisor (a true shrimp expert). In this article we discuss the shrimp extensively, the crab results will be published separately. For one of the species of shrimp it is the first report for Mozambican waters. I wonder if they can still be found there today..

The article is free to read online (Open Access), and can be found here: Crustaceana 97 (1-2). Be sure to give it a quick look, even if it’s only for the wonderful drawings done by my advisor!