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Host-associated morphological convergence in symbiotic pea crabs

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Abstract

Many marine crustaceans form symbiotic relationships, yet there has been little work quantifying morphological adaptations in species specialized on different hosts. Here we examine morphological adaptations of symbiotic pea crabs (Pinnotheridae) to different host phyla. Multiple authors have noted that crabs living with burrowing hosts (burrowing shrimps and annelids) have different carapace shapes than species living with non-burrowing hosts (bivalves, gastropods, echinoderms, and ascidians), but this hypothesis has never been tested. Using digital analyses of taxonomic images, we calculated carapace aspect ratio of 149 pinnotherid species, and used phylogenetic ANOVA to test whether aspect ratio differed among species living with different hosts. Pea crab species living with burrowing hosts had significantly larger carapace aspect ratios (wide carapaces) than species living with non-burrowing hosts (round or square carapaces, or otherwise non-wider than long). Convergent evolution of morphological features in species with specialized host use may be a common—but understudied—pattern in many marine groups.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the librarians at Seattle University for assisting with an endless stream of requests for taxonomic literature, and Charles Lewis for assisting with some shape measurements. Carla Hurt gave very useful comments on an earlier draft of the paper, and Ernesto Campos and an anonymous reviewer made several suggestions that greatly improved the quality of the final manuscript. Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to the myriad of talented taxonomists and pea crab workers who produced the images used in this study.

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  1. Department of Biology, Seattle University, 901 12th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98118, USA

    K. M. Hultgren & C. L. Foxx

  2. Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, 1299 Bethel Valley Rd, Oak Ridge, TN, 37830, USA

    C. L. Foxx

  3. Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Hydrobiology, University of Łódź, ul Banacha 12/16, 90-237, Łódź, Poland

    E. Palacios Theil

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Hultgren, K.M., Foxx, C.L. & Palacios Theil, E. Host-associated morphological convergence in symbiotic pea crabs. Evol Ecol 36, 273–286 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-022-10153-0

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