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Oxygen levels in the ocean fluctuate due to various reasons, both natural and man-made.
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With eighty percent of the snow crabs in Newfoundland and Labrador currently smaller than fishable size, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has warned that continued fishing pressure may lead to long-term harm to the species.
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Imagine being a cleaner shrimp (Ancylomenes pedersoni) and doing about your business in a client's mouth - a client that in other circumstances might see you as a potential meal.
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Scientists at the University of Exeter studying rockpool prawns (Palaemon elegant) have discovered that they exhibit different personalities, and those that are "shy" tend to fare better when competing for food.
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Prozac is an antidepressant used to treat depression and some other mental medical conditions. Over the years, it and other medicinal substances have been finding their way into the oceans, via the sewage system.
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When studying a specimen of walking coral retrieved from the Oshima Strait in southern Japan, ecologist Professor Makoto Kato and his colleague Momoko Igawa made an unexpected discovery.
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Over the years, my dive buddy, the local dive operator, and I have searched for king crabs many times. But on one particular occasion, we experienced a successful expedition and encounters we just did not expect.
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Also known as boxer or pom-pom crabs, the small Lybia crabs are always carrying a pair of sea anemones in their front claws.
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Described as "secretive", the hermit crab was named "candy striped hermit crab" {Scientific name: Pylopaguropsis mollymullerae) by Dr Rafael Lemaitre (Smithsonian Institution, USA) because its colourful appearance resembled the colours of c
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Behavioural innovation is thought to play an important role in enabling animals to cope with environmental change.
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Rising temperature of the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula - one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet - should make it possible for king crab populations to move to the shallow continental shelf from their current deep-sea habitat
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Such crabs have specially evolved to a more compact size so that they can hide in the nooks and small spaces within the coral reefs.
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This changes their camouflage so that they are very well camouflaged against the yellow sand during the day, and dark at night - we think to blend in with shadows on the beach.
Individuals did not change colour when put into dark conditions, but they did become brighter when placed on a white versus a black substrate. Our findings show that ghost crabs have a circadian rhythm of colour change mediating camouflage, which is fine-tuned by adaptation to the background brightness.
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A team from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter exposed crabs to recordings of ship noise and found it affected their metabolism—indicating elevated stress—and found little evidence that crabs acclimatise to noise over time.
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Dr Zachary Darnell and Assistant Professor Pablo Munguia tested a bunch of Gulf coast fiddler crabs (Uca Panacea) – both those who still had their major claws and those who had lost theirs.
In the experiment, researchers shone lamps on crabs with an intact major claw and on crabs that were missing theirs.
They measured the crabs' body temperature every 10 minutes and found that the crabs lacking the large claw took much longer to cool down.
Their study focussing on the Gulf coast fiddler crab (Uca Panacea) was recently published in the American Naturalist journal.
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