Boxer Cancer get their name from their habit of holding anemone like boxing gloves in their claws , one of the foreign symbiotic human relationship in nature . Since at least 11 coinage of tropical crab habituate the anemone for defense and to accumulate food , it clearly works for them . Research on one boxer species has regain the crab louse bring on asexual reproduction in their windflower gloves , something never see before in a non - human fauna .
The symbiotic relationship between crabs of the genusLybiaand anemone has not been well explored . The Crab are minor and well camouflaged , but Yisrael Schnytzer , a graduate educatee at Bar - Ilan University , Israel , define out to correct this , gather more than 100Lybia leptocheliscrabs from the Red Sea off Eilat , all of which were found keep back anemone .
InPeer J , Schnytzer reports that when researchers removed an anemone from one pincer the crabs answer by ripping the one they still have got into two equal office , which were then held , one in each nipper . Genetic analysis of the anemones showed all were clones , indicating they had reproduced asexually and that this splitting is stock behaviour in the state of nature , rather than the crabs picking up two unrelated anemones .
The anemones are so worthful to the crabs that if one is deprived of its boxing glove it will usually push another crab to slip part or all of one of its anemones .
The operation by which boxer crab louse cleave windflower so they reproduce asexually can take more than two hours . Schnytzer et al/ Peer J
Other species of boxer crabs mostly useTriactis productaas their baseball glove of choice , but Schnytzer found thatL. leptochelisuses a species ofAliciaanemones that has yet to be scientifically described or named .
It does n’t sound like a great life for the windflower , what with being thrust in the face of predatory animal so its cutting nettles can ward them off , having food steal by the Crab and getting rip to firearm in fight . Moreover , all this asexual reproduction has kept the anemone ' genetic diversity very downhearted . Schnytzer found that most of the anemones carried by the Red Sea Cancer the Crab were genetically identical , and the rest register only small difference .
However , in aprevious paperSchnytzer confirmed that the anemone profit a benefit through being make a motion around , giving them access to more intellectual nourishment and oxygen than they would be able to acquire on their own . Triactis productais unwashed in tropic sea but Schnytzer and conscientious objector - writer were unable to find any example of thisAliciaspecies living severally , raising the opening they can not survive without the crabs . On the downside , the crabby person effectively bonsai them , keep the anemones from ever getting too large to comfortably carry .
The family relationship is a reversal of the usual one between crabs and anemone , where the crustaceans make their plate among the stinging tentacle , Nemo - like , of a much larger protector .
