[1][2] They were named after Danièle Guinot, a professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in France, and were first treated as a separate species in a tribute volume to Guinot.

[3] The predictable behavior of these crabs has led them to be used to replace the billiard balls in billiard-ball computers.

In these experiments, swarms of up to 40 crabs were herded down corridors by images of predatory bird shadows.

When the configuration of the corridors caused two swarms to meet, they interacted in predictable ways, simulating the behavior of a reversible logic gate.

However, M. guinotae is smaller, with slightly different coloring; both types of crabs have light blue carapaces, but M. brevidactylus has red banding on its legs, whereas M. guinotae does not.