{"id":6327,"date":"2024-10-12T05:23:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T23:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=6327"},"modified":"2025-03-27T14:08:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T08:38:46","slug":"horseshoe-crabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/horseshoe-crabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Horseshoe Crabs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Horseshoe crab:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It belongs to a <strong>class called Merostomata<\/strong>, living fossils, or those organisms that haven\u2019t changed in millennia.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It is a marine <strong>chelicerate arthropod.<\/strong> The Chelicerata is a division within the Arthropoda, containing animals such as spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, mites and ticks.<\/li>\n<li>Like all arthropods, they <strong>have a segmented body<\/strong> and segmented limbs and a thick chitinous cuticle called an exoskeleton.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Habitat:<\/strong> They are living in <strong>shallow coastal waters<\/strong> on soft sandy or muddy bottoms and spawns mostly on <strong>intertidal beaches<\/strong> at summer-spring high tides.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>There are <strong>four extant horseshoe crab<\/strong> species:\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>American horseshoe crab<\/strong> (Limulus polyphemus) along the eastern coast of the USA and in the Gulf of Mexico,<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>tri-spine horseshoe crab<\/strong> (Tachypleus tridentatus),<\/li>\n<li>The coastal horseshoe crab (Tachypleus gigas)\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda)\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The last three are <strong>Indo-Pacific species<\/strong> found mainly in the coastal waters of India, Southeast Asia, China and Japan.<\/li>\n<li>In India Odisha is the largest habitat of horseshoe crabs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conservation status in India<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Wildlife Protection Act 1972<\/strong>: Schedule IV<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>IUCN Status<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>American horseshoe crab<\/strong>: Vulnerable<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tri-spine horseshoe crab<\/strong>: Endangered<\/li>\n<li>The two other species are not listed yet<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What are Arthropods?<\/h3>\n<p>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/the-blue-blooded-sea-creature-on-odishas-coastline\/article68736825.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The blue-blooded sea creature on Odisha\u2019s coastline<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Horseshoe crab belongs to a class called Merostomata, living fossils, or those organisms that haven\u2019t changed in millennia. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6328,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}