Guide to Strawberry Crabs
Strawberry crabs have reappeared in British aquatic stores in recent months, but what do we know about them? Here’s a quick guide:
Name: Strawberry crab, Hawaiian Strawberry crab, Red Boxing Crab
Scientific name: Neoliomera pubescens
Origin: Hawaii, French Polynesia
Size: up to 2”/5cm
Reef safe: Yes
Diet: Omnivorous
Water parameters: As for natural seawater.
Temperature: 22-28 Celsius
Notes: There are photographic records of Strawberry crabs coming to the UK in 2013, although they are not a new species, and they were first described in 1834 by H. Milne Edwards. Their availability is sporadic, however, with low numbers imported at any one time. They can grow to 2” across, although they are much smaller (1”) when imported, and many don’t develop the white spots until they’re larger. Like all crabs. Strawberry crabs can be sexed by viewing the underside and the abdomen. Females have a large abdomen which hangs down to carry eggs, and some newly imported Strawberry crabs can be seen carrying eggs in this way.
The main draw with this species is its bright colouration, although they are smaller in the flesh than many imagine (smaller than an average Mithrax crab), and they will probably hide as soon as they are added to the home aquarium. Their reef safety is questioned by some, who blame them for nibbling corals, while others report no issues with them being kept with corals long term. Like all crabs, Strawberry crabs will be better in mature aquaria with plentiful grazing opportunities amongst live rock. Although they should be reef safe and graze algae, hungry crabs are always less trustworthy.
Online references list Mauritius as an origin, as well as Hawaii, French Polynesia and Indonesia, although Mauritius is situated in the Indian Ocean, versus the Pacific for the former two. Strawberry crabs found in Mauritius are likely a different species, and with hundreds of red coloured crab species in the oceans, different species may well be inadvertently imported as Neoliomera pubescens.
In 2014, researchers from the National Universities of Taiwan and Singapore described a new species of Strawberry crab called Neoliomera fragraea, and this could well be the species in circulation in the hobby. It differs from N.pubescens in the form of the carapace armature, frontal margin, structure of the chela,
proportions of the ambulatory merus and the form of the male first gonopod. They also found a similar-looking congener Neoliomera demani, for the first time in Taiwan.
Read the full paper here: https://mapress.com/zootaxa/2014/f/zt03826p590.pdf
Price: Around £30 each
fragraea n. sp., holotype male (18.3 × 10.1 mm) (ZRC 2014.0206), Guam [photograph by G. Paulay]; E, Neoliomera fragraea
n. sp., paratype male (18.2 × 10.8 mm) (NTOU) [photograph by G. Paulay]; F, Neoliomera demani Forest & Guinot, 1961,
male (35.7 × 18.7 mm) (NTOU), Taiwan [photograph by Wang Kuei-Ching].
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Main image credit G.Paulay
