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Diversity and abundance of mangrove fiddle crabs, genus Uca (Decapoda, Ocypodidae) at a mangrove in Kema, North Sulawesi, Indonesia
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Pratiwi RIANTA1, *, Widyastuti ERNAWATI1, Guangcheng CHEN2, Shunyang CHEN2
Acta Oceanologica Sinica | 2018, 37(12) : 92 - 96
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Acta Oceanologica Sinica | 2018, 37(12): 92-96
• Coastal Environment and Biodiversity in North Sulawesi, Indonesia •
Diversity and abundance of mangrove fiddle crabs, genus Uca (Decapoda, Ocypodidae) at a mangrove in Kema, North Sulawesi, Indonesia
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Pratiwi RIANTA1, *, Widyastuti ERNAWATI1, Guangcheng CHEN2, Shunyang CHEN2
Affiliations
  • 1 Research Center for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Jakarta 14430, Indonesia
  • 2 Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China
Published: 2018-12-25 doi: 10.1007/s13131-018-1336-8
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Mangrove ecosystems are sites with high biodiversity of benthic fauna, and fiddler crabs (genus Uca) are common benthic fauna in mangroves. The North Sulawesi in Indonesia has a good condition of mangrove while the information of the fiddler crabs is still limited. Manual samplings were conducted in wet, dry and transient seasons at a mangrove in Kema, North Sulawesi to investigate the species composition, density and distribution pattern of fiddler crabs. A total of 168 individuals, subjected to eight species of genus Uca crabs were collected at the mangrove, with U. triangularis having the highest abundance and U. annulipes having the lowest abundance. The densities of fiddle crabs were 27.56 ind./m2, 32.89 ind./m2 and 14.22 ind./m2 at the seaward, middle and landward zones, respectively, and the density was higher in dry and wet seasons than in transient season.

Crustacea  /  genus Uca  /  species  /  mangrove  /  North Sulawesi  /  Indonesia
Pratiwi RIANTA, Widyastuti ERNAWATI, Guangcheng CHEN, Shunyang CHEN. Diversity and abundance of mangrove fiddle crabs, genus Uca (Decapoda, Ocypodidae) at a mangrove in Kema, North Sulawesi, Indonesia[J]. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 2018 , 37 (12) : 92 -96 . DOI: 10.1007/s13131-018-1336-8
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1 Introduction
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Mangrove ecosystems support a high biodiversity of benthic fauna because they provide organic matter and nutrients critical to the benthic fauna, and contribute to habitat complexity of the fauna community (Hutchings and Saenger, 1987; Chen et al., 2008). One of the benthic fauna groups which well adapts to the intertidal environment is the fiddler crabs (genus Uca) belonging to Ocypodid crabs. They form an important brachyuran component worldwide in the intertidal flats, especially where near mangrove forest in the tropical and subtropical regions (Sari, 2004; Zeil et al., 2006; Barnes, 2010; Naderloo et al., 2010). Numerous Uca spp. species have been found in a rich abundance in the mangrove habitats (Crane, 1975; Shih et al., 1999). Crane (1975) recognized a total of 59 Uca spp. species around the world; however, according to recent studies (Rosenberg, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2014; Beinlich and von Hagen, 2006; Ng et al., 2008; Barnes, 2010; Nabout et al., 2010), there are more than 100 Uca spp. species.
Most Uca spp. species were reported to be restricted within certain biotopes, because their diversity and abundance (especially those burrowing species) are strongly influenced by environmental factors such as the soil particle size, soil humidity, tidal regime, slope of tidal-flat and food availability (Martin, 2006; Pratiwi, 2007a; Tureli et al., 2009; Murniati, 2010, 2015; Takagi et al., 2010; Qureshi and Saher, 2012). The distribution of Uca spp. crabs thus has a spatial variation with habitat conditions (Geist et al., 2012).
Mangrove ecosystems are well known for their capability of adapting to the extremely coastal environments; however, these ecosystems are also vulnerable to environmental changes (Purnobasuki, 2004). The vast Indonesian archipelago with a mangrove area of 31 100 km2, represents the world hot spot for mangrove extent, accounting 22.6% of the world wide mangrove (Giri et al., 2011). Although the mangrove area in North Sulawesi only represents 0.4% of total area in Indonesia (Pramudji, 2004), mangrove forests in this district are among the most distinctive and unusual in Southeast Asia because of the species that the forests contain. However, currently, there has been little effort to protect these fragile mangrove habitats in this region, and as a result, there has been a substantial degradation of mangroves due to the construction of shrimp ponds and local wood harvesting. The anthropogenic disturbances like conversion of mangrove to farms would result in the change in crab diversity and abundance (Pramudji, 2004; Pratiwi, 2007b) and thus the baseline information is important for the biodiversity conservation. Considering that the ecological information on the benthic fauna communities is still scarce in this region, this research was conducted to investigate the composition and abundance of fiddle crabs at a mangrove in Kema, North Sulawesi, so as to provide ecological baseline information for future decision-making to strength the local efforts for marine biodiversity conservation.
2 Materials and methods
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2.1 Study area
The North Sulawesi has a typical equatorial climate, and the temperatures vary from 20°C to 28°C throughout the region and throughout the year. Tides in this area are mixed and mainly semi-diurnal, and fluctuate slightly with an annual tidal range of 2.4 m. Field samplings were conducted at a mangrove located in Kema, under good conditions with a dense canopy (1°23′02.40″N, 125°05′46.32″E) in North Sulawesi (Fig. 1). The mangrove site was ~200 m from the landward edge to the seaward edge, and samplings were undertaken at the stations with different distances from the land edge, i.e., the landward station (LW), middle zone (MZ) and seaward station (SW). The LW station was dominated by Xylocarpus mollucensis and Rhizophora apiculata also contributed a substantial proportion of trees, while the MZ and SW stations were dominated by R. apiculata.
2.2 Crab sampling
Field studies were carried out during the low tide period in January (wet season), August (dry season) and October (transient season) in 2015 at three sampling stations. Fiddle crabs were collected by a manual catching method in 15 min in three 0.5 m×0.5 m quadrats at each station. Crabs on the floor including those escaping from the plots were rapidly caught by hand, and those hiding in burrows were digged out using a shovel. The crabs from the same quadrat were rinsed and then reserved gradually in 40% and 70% alcohol in the bottle for later identification. The Uca spp. crabs were counted and identified in laboratory according to the identification keys described by Allen (2010), Crane (1975), Davie and Kasuge (1995), George and Jones (1982), Murniati and Pratiwi (2015), Poore (2004), Rahayu and Setyadi (2009) and Rosenberg (2000).
3 Results
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There was a total of 168 individuals of Uca spp. crabs collected at the Kema mangroves throughout the study, and we identified eight species, such as U. triangularis, U. annulipes, U. coarctata, U. vocans, U. triangularis, U. chlorophthalmus, U. dussumieri and U. vomeris (Table 1, Fig. 2). Most of these species were found at all of the three stations, expect U. vocans and U. vomeris which were not collected at the middle zone (Table 1).
Among the eight species, U. triangularis had the highest abundance and the total number collected was 77. The total individual numbers of other three species, U. coarctata, U. vomeris and U. chlorophthalmus were close and ranged from 19 to 25, while the numbers of U. dussumieri, U. vocans and U. annulipes were less than 10.
The abundance of Uca spp. crabs were higher at the SW and MZ stations than the LW station and U. triangularis also had higher abundances at the SW and MZ stations (>30 individuals collected). The MZ station had the highest U. coarctata number among the three stations. The respective densities of Uca spp. crabs were 27.56 ind./m2, 32.89 ind./m2 and 14.22 ind./m2 at the SW, MZ and LW stations, respectively, and the mean density was 24.89 ind./m2 at the Kema mangrove (Table 2). We recorded the highest abundances of Uca spp. crabs in the dry season with a total of 72 individuals collected, and U. triangularis and U. vomeris also had their highest abundances in the dry season (Table 3).
4 Discussion
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Fiddle crabs is a common macrobenthos group in mangroves because they are able to adapt well to the environmental settings of the ecosystems (Ashton et al., 2003; Murniati, 2010), while their distributions are limited to the intertidal habitats. According to Soedibjo and Aswandy (2007), the crustacean species are closely associated with various environmental factors in the intertidal areas. Crane (1975) mentioned that Uca crabs can survive in environments with low salinity rather than high salinity. In addition to the salinity, substrate textureis an other factor that substantially influences the distribution of the Uca spp. crab (Macintosh, 1988; Lim, 2005). Lim (2005) suggested that more crabs were found in the muddy substrate than in the sand substrate. Apparently there was only one species U. annulipes that was found in the sandy substrate while the other species inhabited in the soft substrate in this study (Table 4). This could be because the soft substrate could provide better food sources than the sandy substrate (Lim, 2005; Murniati, 2009). Murniati (2009) also reported that U. annulipes, U. triangularis and U. coarctata that inhabit mangroves were subjected to different substrate types. Uca annulipes crabs inhabit holes and graze on the sandy substrate, while they are also found in the muddy substrate. The U. triangularis and U. coarctata crabs are often found in muddy substrate with a high water content (Murniati, 2009).
In additional to U. triangularis, U. chlorophthalmus, U. coarctata and U. vomeris were also found at the three different stations (SW, MZ and LW). Each station has different habitat, i.e., the SW station was the fringe site and more exposed to the tidal flooding while the LW station was likely to have a higher tidal elevation and less flooded. The results in this study suggested that these four fiddler crab species had a highly adaptive capability or high tolerance to different habitat conditions, which has also been suggested by Pratiwi (2009).
As was suggested, the shade provided by mangrove vegetation adversely affected the distribution of Uca spp. crabs and complex structures of vegetation also impacted their communication by visual signaling or waving, burrowing and refuge from predators in mangroves (Chen et al., 2007). The densities of Uca spp. crabs obtained in this study were lower than those reported by Chen et al. (2007) at an estuarine mangrove, suggesting that the dense and oceanic mangrove in Kema did not provide a habitat as good as the estuarine habitat. Among the eight species recorded, U. triangularis had the highest abudance, suggesting that this species was more adaptive to the dense mangrove environment than the other speices. Uca triangularis was found to be more abundantat areas with a dense vegetation and far away from the waterway, while U. coarctata was generally distributed in open area out of the mangrove and close to the waterway (Murniati, 2009). There was also a spatial variation of Uca spp. abundance among the three sampling stations in this study, with a low density measured at the landward zone than other two stations. We suspected that the lower abundance of Uca spp. crabs was due to that the buttress roots developed by X. mollucensis trees limited the burrowing activities and movements of Uca spp. crabs.
Pratiwi (2007b) suggested that some Uca spp. species can coexist in the same area, but they usually had different behavior patterns and biological characteristics, and these differences were related to their ecological niche and microhabitat characteristics. In this study, the U. triangularis population was the largest population among all species with a smaller size compared to other species. However, the presence of U. triangularis did not exclude the occurrence of other Uca spp. species and it was found in the same habitat as those of other species. Uca spp. crabs are deposit-grazing on the mangrove floor using maxilipeds, so the difference in their habitat was related to their morphological differences (Bezerra et al., 2006; Murniati, 2009). The cover areas of the spoon tipped setae on second maxiliped of each Uca spp. species could partially account for their adaptions to habitat conditions (Murniati, 2009). Bezerra et al. (2006) and Maitland (1990) suggested that second maxiliped played an important role in separating food particles from the sediment. The coarse particles could be separated by spoon tipped setae to avoid being sent into the mouth. This suggested that those species with large cover spoon tipped setae on the second maxilliped could live in a substrate with more coarse particles, while for those living in muddy substrate, the second maxiliped had fewer spoon tipped setae and more pulmose setae.
Acknowledgements
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The authors sincerely thank Dirhamsyah, Chen Bin, Pramudji, I Wayan Eka Darmawan and Mochtar Jabar for their assistances in arranging and conducting the field samplings.
Funding
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  • The China-Indonesia Ecological Station Establishment and Marine Biodiversity Investigation in North Sulawesi Sea; the China-ASEAN Marine Protected Area Ecosystem Management Network; the Public Science and Technology Research Funds Projects of Ocean under contract No. 201505009.
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Year 2018 volume 37 Issue 12
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Article Info
doi: 10.1007/s13131-018-1336-8
  • Receive Date：2017-06-15
  • Online Date：2026-04-14
  • Published：2018-12-25
Article Data
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History
  • Received：2017-06-15
  • Accepted：2018-03-12
Funding
The China-Indonesia Ecological Station Establishment and Marine Biodiversity Investigation in North Sulawesi Sea; the China-ASEAN Marine Protected Area Ecosystem Management Network; the Public Science and Technology Research Funds Projects of Ocean under contract No. 201505009.
Affiliations
    1 Research Center for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Jakarta 14430, Indonesia
    2 Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China

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表12种不同金属材料的力学参数
科
Family		 属数
Number of
genus		 种数
Number of
species		 占总种数比例
Percentage of
total species (%)		 属
Genus		 种数
Number of
species		 占总种数比例
Percentage of total
species (%)
鹅膏菌科Amanitaceae 2 11 5.26 鹅膏菌属 Amanita 10 4.78
小菇科 Mycenaceae 2 12 5.74 丝盖伞属 Inocybe 5 2.39
多孔菌科 Polyporaceae 8 14 6.70 蜡蘑属 Laccaria 5 2.39
红菇科 Russulaceae 3 23 11.00 小皮伞属 Marasmius 6 2.87
小菇属 Mycena 11 5.26
光柄菇属 Pluteus 5 2.39
红菇属 Russula 17 8.13
栓菌属 Trametes 5 2.39
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