All The King Crab Anthropology

King crab is recognized for its aquaculture potential, but several biological and ecological aspects are still unknown from the species, including the ontogeny before the larval stage. It has been assumed that, like the others “spider crabs”, it exhibits sexual dimorphism and three stages of maturity, distinguishable by phenotypic differences: (I) juvenile, (II) intermediate and (III) adult. To address these assumptions, we performed morphometric landmark analysis on the carapace of 325 individuals from three Caribbean islands: Providence, Rosario and San Bernardo. Within each island, sexual differences in carapace size and shape among stages of maturity were tested by applying univariate and multivariate statistical tests, respectively. All

This species, formerly a member of Mithrax genus, was recently reassigned into a new genus of the Mithracidae family by Windsor and Felder (2014). The “king crab” is characterized by a bright carmine red or red wine carapace, subtriangular, slightly wider than long , with a small rostrum formed by two truncate short horns and the first two spines of the anterolateral edge bifid (Williams, 1984). Because the carapace width may reach up 17 cm (Rathbun, 1925), D. spinosissimus is considered the largest crab from the Caribbean with enormous economic potential (Hartnoll, 1965; Munro, 1983; Creswell et al., 1986; Guzmán and Tewfik.,

spinosissimus (Baeza et al (2012). Specifically, the latter species seems exhibit morphological changes from juvenile to pre-puberty, from puberty to adult, and sexual size dimorphism in chelipeds (Munro, 1983; Creswell et al., 1986; Winfree and Weinstein, 1990; Guzmán and Tewfik, 2004) and carapace of adults (Baeza et al. (2012). Moreover, it is known that D. spinosissimus coupling takes place after moulting and does not requires a soft carapace, so it can have continuous spawning (Creswell et al., 1986). Nevertheless, it remains unclear if the development continues or ceases in sexually mature