Sacculina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A parasitized crab showing the externa. From Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904.
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
S. andersoni |
Sacculina is a genus of barnacles that are parasitic on crabs. The adults bear no resemblance to the barnacles that cover ships and piers; they are recognised as barnacles because their larval forms are like other members of the barnacle class Cirripedia.
The female Sacculina larva finds a crab and walks on it until it finds a joint. It then molts, injecting its soft body into the crab while its shell falls off. The Sacculina grows in the crab, emerging as a sac, known as an externa, on the underside of the crab's rear thorax, where the crab's eggs would be incubated.
When a female Sacculina is implanted in a male crab it will interfere with the crab's hormonal balance. This sterilizes it and changes the bodily layout of the crab to resemble that of a female crab by widening and flattening its abdomen, among other things. The female Sacculina has even been known to cause the male crabs to perform mating gestures typical of female crabs.
The male Sacculina looks for a female Sacculina adult on the underside of a crab. He then enters and fertilizes her eggs. The crab (male or female) then cares for the eggs as if it were its own, having been rendered infertile by the parasite.
[edit] References
- Sacculina (TSN 89755). Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
- Zimmer, Carl. "Do Parasites Rule the World?", Discover, August 2000.
