Media advance DMC talk on behavior of decorating crabs
Boothbay Register, The Free Press and Lincoln County News reported Molly Jacobs, a visiting researcher from McDaniel College in Maryland, will present a brown bag seminar on decorator crabs at noon Thursday, Sept. 15 at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center in Walpole. Jacobs’ talk is titled “Age-appropriate outfits? Decorating behavior in juvenile and adult decorator crabs.” Decorator crabs hide from predators by covering themselves with materials from their environment. In young crabs, this behavior development hasn’t been studied as much as habitat selection and physical development. The coordination of all three is important for their survival, though, and understanding the behavior helps to illuminate how young crabs interact with other species on the ocean floor, including invasive crabs. “My current work focuses on the behavioral ecology of crabs, with a particular focus on the period immediately before and after metamorphosis,” Jacobs was quoted in Boothbay Register. “Baby crabs are totally fun to work with, and the work is also important because it can help us understand what happens during the early juvenile period.”