Diogenes heteropsammicola
| Diogenes heteropsammicola | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A, an individual in an aquarium, carrying the coral. B, an individual removed from its host coral. Scale bar: 1 mm. | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Euarthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Crustacea |
| Class: | Malacostraca |
| Order: | Decapoda |
| Family: | Diogenidae |
| Genus: | Diogenes |
| Species: | D. heteropsammicola |
| Binomial name | |
| Diogenes heteropsammicola Igawa & Kato 2017[2] | |
Diogenes heteropsammicola is a species of hermit crab discovered during samplings between 2012 and 2016 in the shallow waters of the Japanese Amami Islands. This hermit crab species is unique due to the discovery that they use living, growing coral as a shell. Crustaceans of this type commonly replace their shell as the organism grows in size, but D. heteropsammicola are the first of their kind to use solitary corals as a shell form. Heteropsammia and Heterocyathus are the two solitary corals that this hermit species has been observed as occupying. These two coral species are also used as a home by symbiotic sipunculans of the genus Aspidosiphon, which normally occupy the corals that the crabs were found inhabiting.[2]
The discoverers of this species are Momoko Igawa and Makoto Kato of Kyoto University, Japan.[2]
References
- ↑ "Diogenes heteropsammicola". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
This taxon has not yet been assessed for the IUCN Red List, and also is not in the Catalogue of Life.
- 1 2 3 Igawa, Momoko; Kato, Makoto (September 2017). "A new species of hermit crab, Diogenes heteropsammicola (Crustacea, Decapoda, Anomura, Diogenidae), replaces a mutualistic sipunculan in a walking coral symbiosis". PLOS One. 12 (9). e0184311. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0184311. PMC 5606932. PMID 28931020.
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