The Hole Shrimp Story 
A burrow in the sand or a hole in coral 
is of paramount importance to mantis shrimps 
by Marjorie L. Reaka 
It had been an exhilarating dive, 
eighty feet below the surface of Cane 
Bay, Saint Croix. My husband, Steve, 
several graduate students, and I had 
been diving in the bay to study the 
growth forms of deep-dwelling corals 
and the animals that live in and under 
them. We had seen gorgonian corals 
that looked like pipe cleaners, huge, 
platelike corals that drooped over the 
precipices, and multicolored fishes. 
The water was dark blue as we drifted 
over the coral-encrusted cliff, which 
drops 200 feet to the floor of the bay. 
Upon our return to the West Indies 
Laboratory (which is affiliated with 
Fairleigh Dickinson University), we 
were told by Charles Seaborn, a pro- 
fessional underwater photographer, 
about an exciting find — a large sand- 
dwelling mantis shrimp had been ob- 
served in a burrow in a nearby bay. 
Although I had been studying the be- 
havior and ecology of tropical mantis 
shrimps for ten years, I had never 
seen this rare species of Lysiosquilla 
in its burrow. Charles, Steve, and I 
immediately dashed off, our old Fiat 
rattling in protest, to observe and pho- 
tograph the creature — a member of 
a lineage that diverged from other ma- 
jor groups of Crustacea about 400 mil- 
lion years ago. 
The ancient Crustacea developed 
into a number of modern lineages, in- 
cluding the Stomatopoda (mantis 
shrimps), Isopoda (pill bugs or sow- 
bugs), Amphipoda (beach hoppers), 
and Decapoda (true shrimps, lobsters, 
and crabs). The isopods and am- 
phipods have eight pairs of walking 
legs. In decapods, these appendages 
have differentiated into five pairs of 
walking legs and three pairs of anterior 
mouthparts, or maxillipeds. The first 
or second walking legs of many dec- 
apods are modified into pinchers; in 
crabs, one first leg is dramatically en- 
larged as a claw, which is used to 
crush and scrape food, in complex dis- 
plays, and in actual combat over shel- 
ter or a mate. 
Stomatopods diverged from an- 
cient crustacean stock earlier (in the 
Alex Kerstrtch 
37 
