Fiddler Crabs Image Gallery
Preview
Identifier
Figure 24
Medium
photograph
Date Created
5-2025
Description
Alt Text: Composite photograph of the Minuca virens fiddler crab which includes several black & white images of different views of the crab, a color photograph, and a distribution map.
Composite Image Description: Figure 24. Minuca virens (Salmon and Astaides, 1968). UNI 457. Collected 22 April 1977, USA, Texas, San Patricio Co., Corpus Christi Bay, Ingleside Cove (27.837838, -97.220076). Scale Bar = 10mm. (A) Dorsal view. (B) Front view. (C) Inner cheliped. (D) Ocular view. (E) Ambulatory. (F) Color Photo. (G) Distribution Map (Finke 2024).
Species Description: M. virens is a cryptic species closely related to M. rapax. There is no taxonomic character to distinguish M. virens from M. rapax. Some variation exists in morphological and behavioral characters, but they are not discrete nor consistent enough to be dependable diagnostics. However, differential growth of anatomical structures appears to vary between Gulf and other population of M. rapax. However, the morphologically cryptic M. virens can be identified as a molecular operational taxonomic unit (Morard et al. 2016) due to its unique DNA sequences. Clearly, M. virens is an evolutionarily significant unit (Chu et al. 2015) geographically separated from the more widely distributed M. rapax complex. Since M. virens offspring are not apparently dispersed widely by tidal and ocean currents, successive generations appear to have inbred while surviving stressful environmental pressures. Thus, they have become genetically distinct from ancestral M. rapax populations. It is notable that the split between the current M. rapax and M. virens was around 2mya (Thurman et al. 2018). Fig. 24G illustrates the distribution of M. virens is in the north and western Gulf of Mexico. Fig. 24 F is the typical color of live M. virens.
Object Description
1 PNG file
UNI Specimen Number
UNI 457
Year Collected
1977
Collection Location
27.837838, -97.220076
Gender
male
Copyright
©2025 Abby Hutchins, Amber Finke, and Carl L. Thurman
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Type
Image
Language
en
File Format
image/png
Recommended Citation
Hutchins, Abby; Finke, Amber; and Thurman, Carl L., "Figure 24. Minuca rapax virens" (2025). Fiddler Crabs Image Gallery. 22.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/fiddlercrabs/22
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Figure-24_minuca_virens_links.pdf (354 kB)PDF version composite image (active links)
Comments
This composite image is of the Minuca rapax virens fiddler crab. It is a part of the parent Fiddler Crabs Image Gallery collection at the University of Northern Iowa, which has images of Fiddler Crabs located in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico from the following genera: Afruca, Leptuca, Minuca, and Uca.