The land crab Johngarthia planata (Stimpson, 1860) (Crustacea, Brachyura, Gecarcinidae) colonizes human-dominated ecosystems in the continental mainland coast of Mexico

Abstract The land crab Johngarthia planata (Stimpson, 1860) has been reported from the Baja California Peninsula and several oceanic islands in the Eastern Pacific as well as inshore islands of the Mexican, Costa Rican and Colombian coast. However, the species has not been observed on the continental mainland, as it is likely that the high diversity of terrestrial predators/competitors make the establishment of mainland populations nearly impossible. In this contribution, several new records of this species that have been observed in urban areas along the continental Pacific coast of Mexico are reported. These records demonstrate that the presence of humans does not necessarily have a negative impact on land crab species. Indeed, the presence of humans may actually discourage the presence of native crab predators/competitors and hence increase the likelihood of a successful mainland settlement of land crab species that are otherwise island and peninsula restricted. The presence of Johngarthia planata is ecologically relevant for coastal forests because gecarcinid crabs significantly influence plant recruitment and Johngarthia planata is considerably larger than the mainland species Gecarcinus quadratus.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  Biodiversity Data Journal

• Publication date

  2014-07-08

• Fields of study

  Biology, Geography, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3897/BDJ.2.e1161PMID 25057257PMCID 4092324
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• PRIMER REGISTRO DE Gecarcinus (Johngarthia) planatus STIMPSON, 1860 (CRUSTACEA: GECARCINIDAE) PARA COLOMBIA Y NOTAS SOBRE SU ZOOGEOGRAFIA EN EL PACIFICO AMERICANO

  2016cited by this paper
• Closing a distributional gap of over 3000 km and encountering an invisible barrier: new presence/absence data for Johngarthia planata Stimpson, 1860 (Decapoda, Brachyura, Gecarcinidae) for Central America and biogeographic notes on East Pacific Gecarcinidae

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