Maja squinado

Maja squinado
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Crustacea
Class:	Malacostraca
Order:	Decapoda
Infraorder:	Brachyura
Family:	Majidae
Genus:	Maja [Note 1]
Species:	M. squinado
Binomial name
Maja squinado (Herbst, 1788)

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]

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 4 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 spiny spider crab swimming in a marine reserve in the Balearic Islands

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

1. ^ The genus Maja is sometimes spelled Maia.

References

External identifiers for Maja squinado
EOL	1021796
ITIS	199961
NCBI	99391
WoRMS	107350

Crustaceans portal

1. ^ ^{a b c} Carl Meyer. "Maja squinado, the European Spider Crab: Biology and Fishery". University of Hawaii. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~carlm/spider.html. Retrieved October 4, 2010. 
2. ^ Bernardez, C., J. Freire & E. Gonzalez–Gurriaran, (2000). "Feeding of the spider crab Maja squinado in rocky subtidal areas of the Ria de Arousa (north-west Spain)". Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 80 (1): 95–102. doi:10.1017/S0025315499001605. 
3. ^ E. Gonzalez–Gurriaran, J. Freire & C. Bernardez (2002). "Migratory patterns of female spider crabs Maja squinado detected using electronic tags and telemetry". Journal of Crustacean Biology 22 (1): 91–97. doi:10.1651/0278-0372(2002)022[0091:MPOFSC]2.0.CO;2. http://www.udc.es/dep/bave/jfreire/html_research/Migratory_patters_spider_crab%20(JCB)%20Abstract.htm. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Le Foll, D. (November 1, 1993). "Biology and fisheries of the spider crab Maja squinado (Herbst) in western English Channel" (in French). Ph.D. thesis, Université de Bretagne Occidentale. http://www.ifremer.fr/docelec/doc/1993/rapport-638.pdf. 
5. ^ Sampedro, M. P. & E. Gonzalez–Gurriaran (2004). "Aggregating behaviour of the spider crab Maja squinado in shallow waters". Journal of Crustacean Biology 24 (1): 168–177. doi:10.1651/C-2404. 
6. ^ L. Garcia–Florez & P. Fernandez–Rueda (2000). "Reproductive biology of spider crab females (Maja brachydactyla) off the coast of Asturias (north-west Spain)". Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 80 (6): 1071–1076. doi:10.1017/S0025315400003131. 
7. ^ "Global Capture Production 1950–2004". Food and Agriculture Organization. September 9, 2006. http://www.fao.org/figis/servlet/TabLandArea?tb_ds=Capture&tb_mode=TABLE&tb_act=SELECT&tb_grp=COUNTRY. 
8. ^ "Council Regulation (EEC) No 3094/86". Official Journal of the European Economic Community. October 7, 1986. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/staging/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31986R3094:EN:HTML. 
9. ^ Neumann, V. (1998). "A review of the Maja squinado (Crustacea : Decapoda : Brachyura) species-complex with a key to the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean species of the genus". Journal of Natural History 32 (10–11): 1667–1684. doi:10.1080/00222939800771191.