Early life stages of common brachyuran species found in Tenerife Island

Abstract

Brachyurans are known to play an important economic and ecological role worldwide, due to their relevance role in marine ecosystems, acting as preys, predators, herbivores, and scavengers among other functions. In the Canary Islands, several species of crustaceans are also considered as important marine resources, especially for fishing purposes. Despite this, little is known about their early life ecology and its taxonomical descriptions, with near zero articles describing this stage. For this study, artificial larval collectors were employed to study juvenile settlement of the main brachyuran species that inhabit the rocky shallow areas in the Canary Islands. In total, juvenile stages of six important species of the archipelago, belonging to five different families of the infraorder brachyura, were described, in addition, representative measures of their main body parts as well as high detailed photography’s of these crustaceans were taken to provide useful information for the identification of these species at its early life stages. Furthermore, we provided the first evidence of the reproduction success of Cronius ruber throughout direct observation of juveniles of this species in the archipelago.