Example 10b

All images copyright protected, © Doug Segar and Elaine Stamman Segar.

This enlargement of the previous photograph reveals a majid crab, Hoplophrys oatesii. This beautiful little crab is a full-sized adult, about 0.5 cm in size. You can see that its carapace (shell) and legs are covered in spiny protuberances that very effectively mimic the spines of its host and home, Dendronephthya. It also has almost exactly the same coloration as the coral polyps. It is helpful that the color of this particular crab is almost, but not quite, the same as the surrounding polyps because the color match is usually so perfect that it would be almost impossible to see the crab in a photograph such as this. Indeed, we have taken many such photographs. Perhaps in this photograph, the majid crab is an immigrant from another nearby Dendronephthya of a slightly different color. However, more likely, it spend most of its life on another part of the Dendronephthya tree where the polyps are a slightly different color, and to which it is exactly matched.

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