Parental care in the freshwater crab Sylviocarcinus pictus (Milne-Edwards, 1853)

Abstract

Parental care is a common strategy in many animal groups, to increase survival of the off- spring. Here, we report parental care in the freshwater crab Sylviocarcinus pictus. A female caught in the Amazon River, Brazil, bore juvenile crabs rather than eggs on her abdomen. Kept in the laboratory, the female retained the juveniles on the abdomen for 17 days, after which the juveniles left the abdomen. A total of 341 ju- venile crabs measuring 3.45 ± 0.12 mm were recorded. This pattern of parental care is very important for the maintenance of local popu- lations of S. pictus, because if the larvae were released, as occurs in many marine species, they would drift downstream.