Ancient homes for hard-up hermit crabs

David K. A. Barnes

Nature 412, 785–786 (2001)

It has been drawn to my attention that I inadvertently omitted to cite previous work relevant to my results — hermit crabs have also been found to use fossils in Bermuda1,2, although in a different context. For some Coenobita clypeatus, namely those in Bermuda, the only shells available of appropriate size are fossils, and therefore little choice or active selection is being made by the resource users. The hermit crab Coenobita rugosus (in Madagascar), like most others elsewhere, is not able to excavate buried shells. Haas1, however, has observed C. clypeatus digging up and clearing debris from partially buried shells in Bermuda, which was also seen by Kellogg3 in laboratory conditions.