just curious about mhc origins

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 8:13 pm

this may sound like dumb question but how do marine hermit crabs come about? like usually the eggs are layed in the ocean then the babies swim around till the grow an abdomen then they coma ashore looking for a shell.. so how did marine hermit crabs form? are they a whole different species or was there just a land hermit crab that could somehow breathe underwater and lived there? does any one know the story about them?

thanks alot, just curious as to how there are land and marine hermits!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 8:23 pm

Im not sure the history of these little guys, but I do know that land hermies evolved from marine hermies. They are very similar in many respects, but the marine hermies are an older species. Land hermies are one of the most advanced invertebrates of all, definately so as far as crustaceans go!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 2:29 am

Actually both marine and land hermit crabs find their first shells in the water. Generally a baby LHC that can't find a suitable shell before it comes ashore does not make it very far.
Marine hermit crabs live under water but, they can survive out of the water as well, providing it's not for an extended period of time. Their shellwater helps facilitate this.
I presume that LHCs evloved from species of marine hermit crabs that began coming ashore more and more (possibly because a shortage of food, maybe something else). Ones with mutated/modified gills were better able to breath atmospheric oxygen and survive on the shore. Eventually, the hermit crabs would have speciated. Now they are completely separate and have different traits, diets, and habitats.
The original, marine hermit crabs are still in the majority however. There are actually about 800 species of hermit crabs in the world. As we know, there are 12 (or 10 or 17, depending on how you count it) species of LHC. That leaves the rest of the 800 as MHCs.