Maja squinado
| Maja squinado | |
|---|---|
| File:Maja squinado.jpg | |
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M. squinado
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| Binomial name | |
| Maja squinado (Herbst, 1788)
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Maja squinado (the European spider crab, spiny spider crab or spinous spider crab) is a species of migratory crab found in the north-east Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea.[1]
Contents
Diet
M. squinado feeds on a great variety of organisms, with seaweeds and molluscs dominating in winter, and echinoderms such as sea urchins and sea cucumbers in summer.[2]
Behaviour
Migrations generally take place in autumn,[3] with some crabs covering over 100 miles (160 km) in eight months.[4] All crabs are vulnerable to predation when moulting, and M. squinado becomes gregarious around that time, presumably for defense against predators.[5] Females can produce up to four broods per year.[6]
Fishery
M. squinado is the subject of commercial fishery, with over 5,000 tonnes caught annually, more than 70% of it off the coast of France, over 10% off the coast of the United Kingdom, 6% from the Channel Islands, 3% from each of Spain and Ireland, 2% from Croatia, 1% from Portugal, and the remainder coming from Montenegro, Denmark and Morocco,[7] although official production figures are open to doubt.[1] The European Union imposes a minimum landing size of 120 mm for M. squinado,[8] and some individual countries have other regulations, such as a ban on landing egg-bearing females in Spain and a closed season in France and the Channel Islands.[1]
Taxonomy
A review of the species complex around M. squinado was able to differentiate between specimens from the Mediterranean Sea and those from the Atlantic, and concluded that the Atlantic specimens were a separate species, called Maja brachydactyla Balss, 1922.[9] The specific epithet squinado derives from the Provençal name for the species – squinado, esquinade, esquinado or esquinadoun — recorded by Rondelet as early as 1554.[4]
Notes
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| External identifiers for Maja squinado | |
|---|---|
| Encyclopedia of Life | 1021796 |
| ITIS | 199961 |
| NCBI | 99391 |
| WoRMS | 107350 |
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