Crabs AIDGAP
PDF eBook
Crabs AIDGAP is an identification guide to the crabs and crab-like animals of shallow waters around Britain and Ireland.
- Designed to be used with living animals
- Illustrated with line drawings throughout
This fully-illustrated AIDGAP field guide will help you identify all the crabs you are likely find on the seashore, and while skin-diving or dredging close inshore. The keys feature over 50 species commonly called ‘crabs’, including hermit and porcelain crabs, as well as true crabs. Identification from living specimens is possible. There is no need to kill the animal or extract it from its shell (for a hermit crab).
Crabs are crustaceans and, like lobsters, prawns and woodlice, they have a hard exoskeleton and numerous jointed limbs. Although crabs are generally straightforward to recognise as a group, species identification is more challenging. Young crabs are smaller, and are easier to confuse than older crabs. In many species the young crabs are commoner on the shore, while the older ones stay in deep water. There are also differences between males and females. Damaged specimens, perhaps missing a leg, are fairly common. Based on the authors’ many years of leading student fieldwork, this key is designed to overcome these pitfalls to identifying live crabs.
This guide is part of Field Studies Council’s AIDGAP series (Aids to Identification in Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants). Our AIDGAP guides are accessible identification keys, suitable for non-specialists from age 16+. As with all guides in the series, the Crabs AIDGAP underwent extensive testing before publication, by beginners and specialists alike. The author has revised this, the first published version, in the light of the testers’ experience.
