 |
 Scientists Study Horseshoe Crabs to Help Prevent Their Decline
|
|
|
Place your cursor over the slideshow for captions. |
census on beaches up and down the East Coast. In addition to counting the critters, the scientists are tagging them so they can track how long they live and how and where they travel. Scientists are worried that the number of horseshoe crabs may be declining.
That’s not just bad news for horseshoe crabs and the beachcombers who admire them. Horseshoe crabs are important to the ecosystem. Sea turtles eat young horseshoe crabs, and at least 10 different kinds of shorebirds eat their eggs. Mussels, barnacles, and other sea animals live on their sturdy shells. Horseshoe crabs are also important to human medicine. They have a special type of blood that is used to test vaccines intended for humans.
Professor Jennifer Mattei, who teaches biology at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, is in charge of the census, called Project Limulus. She’s recruited teachers and students from local elementary schools to give her a hand. They go to nearby beaches, count the creatures, and then report their data to Mattei.
Mattei says the project is a great hands-on science lesson for kids, especially since horseshoe crabs are harmless. They may look fearsome, but they don’t pinch, sting, or bite. In fact, horseshoe crabs are not crabs at all! They are more closely related to spiders and scorpions. Many people think the horseshoe crab’s long pointy tail is a stinger, but it’s really a rudder that helps it turn. The creatures are named for their shells, which are shaped like horses’ hooves. “Now that I know they won’t hurt me a lot, I like them,” Micaiah Ferguson, 7, a student at the Unquowa School in Fairfield, Conn., told the Hartford Courant.
No one knows for sure how many horseshoe crabs exist. A low estimate places the number between 2.3 million and 4.5 million. Mattei suspects there are far fewer horseshoe crabs along the Connecticut shoreline than in the past. “People who’ve lived here all their lives say when they were children they would see thousands of them. Now they don’t see as many, and people are asking, ‘Is the population in decline? Are we going to lose the species in Long Island Sound?’”
|
Threats to the creature include habitat loss from continuing construction of buildings along shorelines. Fishing is another threat: horseshoe crabs are used as bait for catching eel and conch. Though horseshoe crabs are used for medical research, 90 percent of those creatures are safely returned to the ocean. About 10 percent, however, do not survive.
The researchers will compare the data from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts with data from Mid-Atlantic states, such as Delaware, where there is a large horseshoe crab population. The count will continue for two more years, and then the researchers will release their official report.
Find out more about Project Limulus here:
www.projectlimulus.org
Read a horseshoe crab fact sheet from the Georgia Aquarium:
www.georgiaaquarium.org/animalguide/georgiaexplorer/horseshoecrab.aspx
How fast can you put together our horseshoe crab puzzle?
Give it a try!
Give it a try!
Back to Top
 |
 |
 |
Add to del.icio.us |  Subscribe Now |
RSS