HomeMy WebLinkAboutDecember 13, 2001 - Honoring the horseshoe crabThe Suffolk Times * December 13, 2001
LAST WEEK I WAS PRIVILEGED to
take part in a symposium at the City
University of New York's Graduate
Center. It was on a topic particularly
dear to me, but seasonally out of plac
for me to write about since I usually
write about cur-
rent happenings
in the natural
ON world. What the
NATURE
conference was
about was "The
by Paul Resilient
Stoutenburgh Horseshoe Crab:
Guardian of
Time." It was about that lonely and
misunderstood creature that many of
you see in the springtime here in our
local creeks and bays.
The horseshoe crab, Limulus
polyphemus, existed long before the
dinosaurs roamed the earth 200 mil-
lion years ago. It was around before
the birds and mammals and plants
made their appearance. The sympo-
sium brought together scientists, ar-
tists and other elements of society in
the hope that through a better under-
standing of the horseshoe crab and its
ability to overcome the many obsta-
cles of time, we might just correct
some of the mistakes we've made in
the past.
We get a glimpse of this mysterious
wanderer only in the spring, for that's
the time of year the females come to
the sandy beach edge with the males
attached to their backs. The females
lay their eggs in the sand along the
high -tide line and the clinging male
then fertilizes them.
The females are larger than the
males and often you'll see more than
one male attached to the female, with
some climbing over the others in
hopes of being the one that will fertil-
ize her eggs. The horseshoe crab's life
cycle is fascinating. Once the eggs are
deposited in the sand of the high,
high -tide line, they are left to be
developed by the warmth of the sun.
Then approximately a month later,
when there's a full moon and again
that extra -high tide, the babies hatch
from their egg cases and work their
way out of the "sand and start their life
cycle of molting, for like crabs, in
order to grow they must leave their
old shell behind.
A horseshoe crab will molt 16 to 17
times before it reaches adult size,
which is in about 10 years. Once it is
WHonoriin
horses o
the
FaM
Photo by Barbara Stoutenburgh
An empty shell of Limulus polyphemus, the resilient horseshoe
crab. Just this past week it was the subject of a celebration
called "The Resilient Horseshoe Crab: Guardian of Time,"
sponsored by the Americas Center on Science and Society at
the City University of New York Graduate Center, coordinated
by director Ron Hellman of GreenDort.