The Coenobitidae are the family of
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
hermit crab
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 a ...
s, widely known for their land-living habits as adults. They are found in coastal
tropical
The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in
the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...
regions around the world and require access to the ocean to breed.
Although coenobitids are fully terrestrial as adults, they spend their marine life as planktonic larvae. Female coenobitids return to the sea to hatch their eggs and their larvae develop through planktonic zoeal stages to a megalopa, in a similar way as the marine hermit crabs. Just like these species, after settlement, terrestrial hermit crabs megalopae recognize and co-opt gastropods shells, before migrating into the land and molting to the first crab stage.
The 17 species are placed in two genera:
References
* Hamasaki, K., Iizuka, C., Sanda, T., Imai, H. and Kitada, S. (2017), ''Phylogeny and phylogeography of the land hermit crab Coenobita purpureus (Decapoda: Anomura: Coenobitidae) in the Northwestern Pacific Region.'' Mar Ecol, 38: e12369.
External links
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Hermit crabs
Terrestrial crustaceans
Decapod families
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