Crabs that are not hermit crabs: the decorators, the coral dwellers, the swimmers and the ones that spend the day buried. Camouflage rather than speed is the theme.
The decorators build their camouflage instead of growing it. The decorator crab attaches sponge, hydroid and rubbish until nothing of the crab shows; the candy crab wears the polyps of the Dendronephthya it sits in; the corallimorph decorator crab plants living corallimorphs over its whole shell; the sponge crab cuts a piece of sponge to fit and holds it over its back. The Halimeda crab goes further and is shaped like a segment of the alga it lives on.
Others are found by searching a host rather than the ground. The coral guard crabs live between the branches of the coral they defend, the gall crab spends its life sealed in a chamber the coral has grown around it, the porcelain crabs sit in anemones, on sea pens and in soft coral, and the zebra crab lives on the fire urchin.
The box and moon crabs spend the day buried and surface at night, which is when most of them are recorded. Two carry a warning rather than a habit: the mosaic crab and the seven-eleven crab hold toxins that cooking does not destroy, and neither should be eaten.
Every one has a page. They are shown as a list rather than as pictures because nothing has been photographed or logged for them yet, and a species with nothing behind it should not sit in front of one that has.
How many of the 45 carry a record at each destination. A species usually carries several, so these do not add up to 45.
All 1316 species in one index, with filters for destination, rarity and hazard.
