Coral Hermit Crab

Paguritta harmsi is a ten-legged species of hermit crab from the Paguridae family. Paguritta harmsi is a Rigth-handed Hermit Crab, which inhabit tubes or worm holes in living hard corals.

Description

Shield orange-brown. Ocular peduncles with four orange-brown and four creamcoloured stripes, corneae deep brown; acicles also orange-brown. Antennular and antennal peduncles and flagella cream or very pale brown. Chelipeds similarly coloured. Dactyls and fixed fingers white in distal half, orange brown mosaic or reticulation proximally; palm orangebrown with varying areas of white; carpus orange-brown with some cream; merus similar but paler. Ambulatory legs very pale brown-cream.

Rostrum prominent, acute, usually with terminal spine or spinule. Lateral projections usually  with terminal spinule. Ocular peduncles long, overreaching antennal peduncle, slender; corneae oval or ovate. Ocular acicles long, narrow, terminating subacutely or bluntly and with very strong submarginal spine. Antennal peduncle with dorsolateral distal angle of second segment strongly produced, broad and armed with three to six strong spines, dorsomesial distal angle unarmed.

Distribution

Indo-West Pacific: Australia, Indonesia (Raja Amat), Papua New Guinea.

Habitat

It feeds on plankton,that it filters from the water using its long, feathered antennae. It lives within colonies of the massive coral, Astreopora myriopthalma, growing in 8-10 m. Small hermit crabs (2-3 mm body length) were found within normal, tissue-containing corallites of the host, while larger individuals occupied the outer portion of tubular pits that extended as much as 98 mm down into the coral skeleton.