***CITIZEN SCIENCE DATA WANTED*** Furrowed / Montagu's Crab distribution

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Hi there,

Whoever’s reading, I hope you’re doing well during these difficult times.

In preparation for my 2021 MRes project, I’d be super grateful if this community could help out and provide reports of their own local sightings plus relevant details (location, habitat, population densities, size of individuals) concerning these buff crustaceans:

Montagus-crab-Wembury-1-RJ2-Paul-Naylor-marinephoto-copy-2
(Photo credit: Paul Naylor, www.marinephoto.co.uk)

Montagu’s crab is considered a climate-indicator species, so the importance of monitoring its distribution speaks for itself, however there’s surprisingly little scientific work on the UK distribution and ecology of these crabs. My work aims to see whether these crabs pose a threat to juvenile Edible crabs (Cancer pagurus) through competitive exclusion.

I’m hoping to collect some anecdotal evidence to support their ‘climate-indicator’ tag, I’m aware this isn’t scientific data collection :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: It would also be a great bonus if contributors could recall and describe how the populations of these crabs compared with that of other crabs present, particularly Edible crabs.

Big thanks in advance to any readers and contributors! Also, if anyone has any advice on how I should spread this topic, including better threads / sites / forums to post on, please feel free to propose anything!

~ Joey

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If you are interested in this species and know how to identify it then perhaps you could help in our citizen science project as well. For example do a search on ispot for this species and help to identify whether it is that species or not e.g.

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I visited the (Invalid) first one above. It shows 5 Other Obs
I have yet to look at them in detail but I hope Joeypd98 does respond.
It was he who added the Risso’s Crab (Xantho pilipes) in 2019 (seen above)