I work on a group of crabs some of which inhabit hard corals.  
These belong to the primitive family Dynomenidae. They are not unlike  
the xanthid or "black-fingered" crabs but have the last pair of legs  
very reduced and obsolete. Dynomenids tend to be covered in a  
fairly dense layer of setae. There are only about 13 species known and  
they are mostly small: around 10 - 30mm carapace width in size. I am  
writing a monograph of the whole family. 

    These crabs mostly belong to the genus "Dynomene" and have been  
collected from "Pocillopora", "Goniastrea", and "Porites" corals. They  
seem to live only in the dead part of the coral head or perhaps in  
the coral rubble at the base. Since I have never seen live ones I  
have a number of questions: 

    1) Have you ever seen any crabs like these? - if you have any  
samples I would be happy to identify them for you.  

    2) Are there any data from whole-coral head samples of co- 
inhabitants which include these dynomenids?  

    3) Has anyone made any observations of live dynomenid crabs? How  
do they feed? Do they sometimes live in the live part of the coral  
head?  

    Any help that you can give will be greatly appreciated. 

    Thanks, 


Dr Colin McLay 
Zoology Department 
Canterbury University 
PB 4800, Christchurch 
New Zealand. 
Tel: +64 3 364 2887 
FAX:   +64 3 364 2024 
email: c.mclay@zool.canterbury.ac.nz 
WWW Home Page: http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/zool/cm.htm