Horseshoe Crabs

About Horseshoe crab:

• It belongs to a class called Merostomata, living fossils, or those organisms that haven’t changed in millennia. 
• It is a marine chelicerate arthropod. The Chelicerata is a division within the Arthropoda, containing animals such as spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, mites and ticks.
• Like all arthropods, they have a segmented body and segmented limbs and a thick chitinous cuticle called an exoskeleton.
• Habitat: They are living in shallow coastal waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms and spawns mostly on intertidal beaches at summer-spring high tides. 
• There are four extant horseshoe crab species:
  • The American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) along the eastern coast of the USA and in the Gulf of Mexico,
  • The tri-spine horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus),
  • The coastal horseshoe crab (Tachypleus gigas) 
  • The mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda) 
  • The last three are Indo-Pacific species found mainly in the coastal waters of India, Southeast Asia, China and Japan.
  • In India Odisha is the largest habitat of horseshoe crabs
• Conservation status in India
  • Wildlife Protection Act 1972: Schedule IV
• IUCN Status
  • American horseshoe crab: Vulnerable
  • Tri-spine horseshoe crab: Endangered
  • The two other species are not listed yet

Q1: What are Arthropods?

These are invertebrates with jointed legs. They make up about 75% of all animals on Earth and have a major role in maintaining ecosystems as pollinators, recyclers of nutrients, scavengers and food for other animals. 

Source: The blue-blooded sea creature on Odisha’s coastline

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