Plumb Beach, Brooklyn, New York in USA is an important horseshoe crab breeding and nursery ground that has experienced substantial anthropogenic influence, including pollution, erosion and subsequent restoration. Since little is known about the relationship between sediment microbial communities and juvenile horseshoe crab survival, next generation sequencing was used to characterize and compar...

Each spring adult horseshoe crabs migrate from deep bay waters and the Atlantic continental shelf to intertidal sandy beaches to spawn. Horseshoe crabs are an important food source for migrating shorebirds that feed on the eggs, for migrating fish that feed on the eggs and larvae and for Atlantic loggerhead turtles that feed on horseshoe crabs while using the Chesapeake Bay as a summer nursery ...

Beyond their commercial importance for LAL and bait, and their status as a living fossil, it is often asserted that horseshoe crabs play a vital role in the ecology of estuarine and coastal communities. How would the various ecological relationships involving horseshoe crabs be affected if these animals were no longer abundant? Attempts to understand and generalize the ecological importance of ...

The zoological collection of the National Museum, Prague (NMP) contains spirit (juvenile) as well as dry (mostly adult) specimens of horseshoe crabs (Xiphosura). Living horseshoe crabs are of immunological importance due to clotting agents present in their hemolymph. Here we summarize basic data about the mechanism of the immune system of these marine animals and its use in practice – the Limul...

Abstract Horseshoe crabs as a group are renowned for their morphological conservatism punctuated by marked shifts in morphology associated with the occupation of non-marine environments and have been suggested to exhibit consistent developmental trajectory throughout evolutionary history. Here, we report new species horseshoe crab from Ordovician (Late Sandbian) Kingston, Ontario, Canada, juven...

Highly structured nursery habitats promote the survival of juvenile stages of many species by providing foraging opportunities and refuge from predators. Through integrated laboratory and field experiments, we demonstrate that nursery habitat structure affects survival and predator-prey interactions of red king crab Paralithodes camtschaticus. Crabs (<1 yr old [Age 0]; 8 to 10 mm carapace lengt...

Management of the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, is currently surrounded by controversy. The species is considered a multiple-use resource, as it plays an important role as bait in a commercial fishery, as a source of an important biomedical product, as an important food source for multiple species of migratory shorebirds, as well as in several other minor, but important, uses. Concern has...

Problem from eating poisonous seafood can be seen in marine medicine[1-3]. Several marine animals can be toxic. The good examples are fishes[4], mussels[5] and shellfishes[6,7]. Horseshoe crab (Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda) can be poisonous and intoxication due to intake is possible[8]. Horseshoe crab poisoning can be seen in many countries with seacoasts including China and Thailand. In animal...

Although numerous small-scale laboratory, mesocosm, and field experiments have demonstrated that abundance, survival, and growth of juvenile fish and invertebrates are higher in vegetated than in unvegetated habitats, the effect of habitat quality (i.e. habitat complexity) within vegetated habitats has not been documented at a broad spatial scale. We examined the relationship between percent co...

A manned submersible was used in a fjord in southeastern Alaska to study the distributional patterns of the red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) and the Tanner crab (Chionoecetes bairdi) in summer. The cove was divided into three zones: inner, middle, and outer. Six types of habitats, including sand-mud, rock, shell, debris, rock wall, and algae, were identified from video tapes. A relati...