Study of shore crab response to intertidal stimuli

INTRODUCTION- Since its itroduction to the New Jersey shore in 1988, the western Pacific shore crab Hemigrapsus sanguineus has spread to inhabit rocky intertidal locations along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina (McDermott 1998). Many reasons have been proposed to explain the rapid spread of this non-indiginous species. For example, it has been shown that H. sanguineus has longer spawning periods along the mid-Atlantic coast than it does in its natural habitat in the western …

…Atlantic coast of the United States. The survival rate of those species should then be plotted against the survival rate of H. sanguineus to determine if any have a selective advantage over one another, in terms of durability to extreme conditions. This experiment could present more evidence to further prove that tolerance to temperature and salinity variations is an important factor in the spread of H. sanguineus along the Atlantic Coast of the United States.