Another ramble in addition to the last one, but
There are just so many cool people involved with CrabCon and I’m so excited to be able to attend and learn from them. First, the amazing women who organized this entire thing, Mary Akers (first breeder successful at large enough numbers to adopt out widely) and Stacy Griffith (runner of Crab Street Journal, Land Hermit Crab Owners Society group & has had crabs for 15+ years & done tons of work to collect scientific papers and research done on hermit crabs to inform care info).
And then we have people like Carol Ann Ormes, who has Jonathan Livingston Crab - he’s the oldest hermit crab we know of, at least 45 years old!! She’s had him for 40 years!!! She watched all the talks today & we’re going to have a session on Sunday to talk to her & see Jonathan!
The person who did the talk on reproduction is Dr. Christopher Tudge, a researcher with the American University in Washington DC, who does research on invertebrate reproduction - https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/ctudge.cfm Mary and Stacy were SO excited that he was able to participate, and even cooler, he’s very interested in the work our community is doing with captive breeding & the success that Mary has had!
And there’s going to be a talk on Sunday with someone who successfully raised hermit crabs a number of years ago and was able to get footage of zoea under a microscope for amazing views of their structure & the molting process as they move between stages!
OH and we have a person in the group who straight up has figured out something no one else has, including scientific researchers - she discovered a method to identify individual crabs, even as they change shells and go through molts! Like, that’s a major discovery that could do a lot to aid in scientific research of crabs!
Aaaaaaand there’s gonna be another panel, I think on Sunday, about how casual crab owners can collect information in a way to be useful for scientific research, so our work and observations can be helpful for science and for the future of hermit crabs!
Like AHHHHH this is just so cool???
