Pachycheles rudis “Thick-clawed Porcelain Crab” Decapoda

Fox Island, WA
June 23, 2013
Robert Niese

Porcelain crabs are not actually “true crabs” and are a remarkable example of convergent evolution in the Decopod order. In fact, crab-like forms have evolved so many times within the crustacean clade that evolutionary biologists have given this type of convergent evolution its own name: carcinization. Porcelain crabs are more closely related to hermit crabs and squat lobsters than they are to a typical Cancer crab.