Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Introduction:
The ghost crabs are very interesting little invertebrates. They are often known as the sand crabs because of the fact that they live on the beaches of the east side of the United States but not only that, they live in little hole that they make themselves. They are in the kingdom Animalia, phylum Arthropoda, and subphyla Crustacea. It has been found that the younger crabs tend to live close to the water and the adult crabs tend to live farther from the water. I read in an article that since these crabs live in holes they have to constantly go to the ocean to wet their gills. Also the female ghost crabs make trips to the ocean to release their eggs off into the ocean. Unfortunately for them this is a big reason why they are an easy target for birds. The ghost crabs are one of the bigger sources of food for the birds.


Anatomy:




















Form and function:

The ghost crab as I said before burrow holes in the ground that could be up to four feet deep and use the holes to survive. The crabs stay at the bottom of the holes during the hottest days because it is much cooler, and stay at the bottom of the hole during the coldest days to stay away from the cold. The ghost crabs have eyes that actually allow them to view all 360 degrees of their surroundings but they can’t see up into the air. Another cool fact about them is that when food is unavailable they actually eat the sand and extract the algae from the sand and the algae becomes the food. Ghost crabs hibernate in the winter and sleep for six months. How do they do this you might ask? It’s because these ghost crabs store air in tiny little sacs that are close to the gills that they access so they can remain sleeping all through winter. The ghost crabs have four pairs of legs and two claws in which they use to attack their prey. The adult crabs feed on turtle hatchlings unfortunately, algae, and dentrites.



Impact on the world/ humanity:
The ghost crabs are a crucial part of the shorebirds food source and for many other species. Instead of talking directly about the impact they have had on the world I wanted to talk about the impact that we have had on them. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has had a tremendous amount of negative effects on the ghost crabs. One big reason is because the ghost crabs live so close to the ocean and they live in holes, the oil has actually washed up to the shore and polluted the ghost crabs home and habitat. With less of these crabs around much more species of animals will continue to be effected by it. Here is a picture of a ghost crab that has been flooded by the oil spill.




















Journal article review:
What the article was saying is that the ghost crab are not federally placed in the endangered or extinct watch but that does not mean that we can be less careful with these crabs. It also said that since these crabs live in the ground and since there has been an increase on oil tankers, these crabs are getting affected by a greater amount of stranded oil on the beaches.
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/cwcs/pdf/Ghostcrab.pdf


WORKS CITED:

http://birding.typepad.com/gulf/2010/06/the-ghost-crab.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aqua/ghost-crab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_crab