Through the microscope - a baby Red Rock Crab (Cancer productus) measuring less than 1 inch across! (photo: E. Loury)
Erin Loury
by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab
These photos come to you straight from the fish gut detective files – and are a diet scientist’s (sadly nerdy) dream come true. Most of the time, we peer under microscopes to poke and prod at mashed, chewed, digested bits, trying to figure out what animal they once resembled.
Rare are those those idyllic occasions when, behold! A perfect little specimen appears in your gopher rockfish stomach, as intact as if it had crawled out from under a rock…AND you just so happen to find an identification key from 1921 for tiny crab specimens under 2 cm. That is what we in the gut world would consider a “good day.”
The crab snack above was pretty easy to identify. Cancer productus, the red (yes, red) rock crab is distinctive in its crazy juvenile color patterns, including bright white. My real triumph as also identifying this widdle guy (Cancer jordani, the hairy rock crab, should you care to know)…
Dime sized - wave hello to baby Cancer jordani, aka gopher rockfish lunch (photo: E. Loury).
The running joke of the diet world is that people who poke at guts become more familiar with the prey species than their predator of study. Hence, despite being in the ichthyology lab, I will be one crackerjack invertebrate identifier when this is all through, since gopher rockfish love to chow down on all things spineless. At least, I’ll have the market on identifying 1-inch Cancer crabs cornered!
March 30, 2011 at 9:02 am |
[...] This baby red rock crab (Cancer productus), only about an inch wide, still shows some of its bright patterning even after being digested in a gopher rockfish stomach. Spending more hours than I’d care to admit sifting through fish guts may give one a slightly skewed perspective on the definition of “pretty,” but after identifying so many drab brownish crabs of other species, I found this little guy downright bedazzling. The color variation in this species is captivating: check out its shocking-white color morph. [...]