The Territory of Christmas Island is an Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean comprising the island of the same name. It is located approximately 350 kilometres south of Java and Sumatra and about 1,550 km (840 nmi) north-west of the closest point on the Australian mainland. With an area of 135 square kilometres (52 sq mi), Christmas Island's geographic isolation and history of minimal human disturbance has led to a high level of endemism among its flora and fauna, which is of interest to scientists and naturalists. The territory derives its name from its discovery on Christmas Day 1643 by Captain William Mynors.
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and the Americas. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves. The Bering Sea is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish-born Russian navigator, who, in 1728, was the first European to systematically explore it, sailing from the Pacific Ocean northward to the Arctic Ocean.
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting tail-like abdomen, usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the world's oceans, in freshwater, and on land. They are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton. They generally have five pairs of legs, and they have pincer claws on the ends of the frontmost pair. They first appeared during the Jurassic period, around 200 million years ago.
The yellow crazy ant, also known as the long-legged ant or Maldive ant, is a species of ant, thought to be native to West Africa or Asia. They have been accidentally introduced to numerous places in the world's tropics.
The crab-eating macaque, also known as the long-tailed macaque or cynomolgus macaque, is a cercopithecine primate native to Southeast Asia. As a synanthropic species, the crab-eating macaque thrives near human settlements and in secondary forest. Crab-eating macaques have developed attributes and roles assigned to them by humans, ranging from cultural perceptions as being smart and adaptive, to being sacred animals, being regarded as vermin and pests, and becoming resources in modern biomedical research. They have been described as a species on the edge, living on the edge of forests, rivers, and seas, at the edge of human settlements, and perhaps on the edge of rapid extinction.
Hermit crabs are anomuran decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea that have adapted to occupy empty scavenged mollusc shells to protect their fragile exoskeletons. There are over 800 species of hermit crab, most of which possess an asymmetric abdomen concealed by a snug-fitting shell. Hermit crabs' soft (non-calcified) abdominal exoskeleton means they must occupy shelter produced by other organisms or risk being defenseless.
King crabs are decapod crustaceans of the family Lithodidae that are chiefly found in deep waters and are adapted to cold environments. They are composed of two subfamilies: Lithodinae, which tend to inhabit deep waters, are globally distributed, and comprise the majority of the family's species diversity; and Hapalogastrinae, which are endemic to the North Pacific and inhabit exclusively shallow waters. King crabs superficially resemble true crabs but are generally understood to be closest to the pagurid hermit crabs. This placement of king crabs among the hermit crabs is supported by several anatomical peculiarities which are present only in king crabs and hermit crabs, making them a prominent example of carcinisation among decapods. Several species of king crabs, especially in Alaskan and southern South American waters, are targeted by commercial fisheries and have been subject to overfishing.
The Christmas Island red crab is a species of land crab that is endemic to Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. Although restricted to a relatively small area, an estimated 43.7 million adult red crabs once lived on Christmas Island alone, but the accidental introduction of the yellow crazy ant is believed to have killed about 10–15 million of these in recent years. Christmas Island red crabs make an annual mass migration to the sea to lay their eggs in the ocean. Although its population is under great assault by the ants, as of 2020 the red crab had not been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and it was not listed on their Red List. The crab's annual mass migration to the sea for spawning is described as an "epic" event. Millions emerge at the same time, halting road traffic and covering the ground in a thick carpet of crabs.
Grapsus grapsus is one of the most common crabs along the western coast of the Americas. It is known as the red rock crab, or, along with other crabs such as Percnon gibbesi, as the Sally Lightfoot crab.
Fernando de Noronha Marine National Park is a national park in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil.
Coenobita cavipes is a species of land hermit crab native to the eastern parts of Africa, the Indonesia, Philippines, China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Polynesia, and Micronesia. While these hermit crabs are terrestrial, they prefer to reside near the shores for access of both water and land.
Atol das Rocas Biological Reserve is a biological reserve in Brazil. It is located on the Rocas Atoll, an atoll 266 km (165 mi) north-east of the Brazilian coast. It was established in 1979 to protect nesting sea turtles and migratory seabirds.
The coconut crab is a terrestrial species of giant hermit crab, and is also known as the robber crab or palm thief. It is the largest terrestrial arthropod known, with a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9 lb). The distance from the tip of one leg to the tip of another can be as wide as 1 m. It is found on islands across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as far east as the Gambier Islands, Pitcairn Islands and Caroline Island and as far west as Zanzibar. While its range broadly shadows the distribution of the coconut palm, the coconut crab has been extirpated from most areas with a significant human population such as mainland Australia and Madagascar.
Percnon gibbesi is a species of crab. It is one of at least two species commonly called Sally Lightfoot, and is also referred to as the nimble spray crab or urchin crab. It has been described as "the most invasive decapod species to enter the Mediterranean".
Sally Lightfoot may refer to:
Percnon is a genus of crabs in the family Percnidae. It has also been included in the family Plagusiidae as subfamily Percninae.
The Plagusiidae are a family of crabs, formerly treated as a subfamily of the family Grapsidae, but have since been considered sufficiently distinct to be a family in their own right. The family Plagusiidae includes the subfamily Plagusiinae, comprising the genera Percnon and Plagusia, which constitute a widespread group of litophilic, intertidal and subtidal crabs that are notorious for their speed and their agility.
Gecarcinus ruricola is a species of terrestrial crab. It is the most terrestrial of the Caribbean land crabs, and is found from western Cuba across the Antilles as far east as Barbados. Common names for G. ruricola include the purple land crab, black land crab, red land crab, and zombie crab.
Diogenes heteropsammicola is a species of hermit crab discovered during samplings between 2012 and 2016 in the shallow waters of the Japanese Amami Islands. This D. heteropsammicola is strongly associated with the walking corals. This hermit crab species is unique due to the discovery that they use living, growing coral as a shell. They live in the inside of the coral and can be distinguished from other types of hermits by their thin chelipeds and leg shape. Crustaceans of this type commonly replace their shell as the organism grows in size, but D. heteropsammicola are the first of their kind to use solitary corals as a shell form. Heteropsammia and Heterocyathus are the two solitary corals that this hermit species has been observed as occupying. These two coral species are also used as a home by symbiotic Sipuncula of the genus Aspidosiphon, which normally occupy the corals that were previously occupied by crabs.
Percnidae is a family of crabs in the superfamily Grapsoidea. Percnidae contains about six described species in one genus: Percnon.
