Mangrove crab

They belong to many different species and families and have been shown to be ecologically significant by burying and consuming leaf litter.

[9][10] Mangrove crabs have wide variety of ecological and biogeochemical impacts due to the biofilms that live in symbiosis with them as well as their burrowing habits.

[6] Mangrove crabs are a part of the Animalia kingdom and are put into the Arthropoda phylum, Malacostraca class, and Decapoda order.

[17] Mangrove crabs can be classified into six different families: Camptandriidae, Dotillidae, Macrophthalmidae, Ocypodidae, Sesarmidae, and Oziidae.

[5] When young, mangrove crabs get most of their nutrients from polychaete worms and a multitude of microorganisms found living in the sediments and leaves of their environment.

[20] As they grow older mangrove crabs are generally detritivores with their diet consisting of already dead organic material.

These burrows aid them in enduring the extremes that can be found in mangroves at high and low tide, allowing them to maintain more constant and ideal temperatures and oxygen levels.

[27] Both types of crab significantly increase the surface area of the sediment and water/air interface to similar extents when scaled for relative abundance.

[6] Aeration allows for additional microbial decomposition,[13] oxidation of iron, and reduction of sulfur by anaerobic microbes.

This leads to extremely high pyrite concentrations in mangrove soils,[31] and removal of sulfides that negatively impact plant growth.

[9] Climate change due to anthropogenic activities is likely to create fluctuations in these two factors, driving the mangrove crab habitats to higher latitudes.

[14] Around 6,000 km2 of mangrove was deforested between 1996 and 2016, usually redeveloped for fish and shrimp aquaculture, rice cultivation, palm oil plantations,[15] and sometimes urbanization.