After talking to Annie Morgan this week I have decided to base my research more on the environmental factors affecting horseshoe crabs. There are just so many unanswered questions about them and no one really knows why their numbers are dwindling over the years. A lot of it has to do with harvesting and habitat destruction but this article that I found,
"Climate change affects horseshoe crab numbers", also suggests that according to a new study horseshoe crabs could be sensitive to climate change which could be responsible for the decline in populations. Even though it is a small amount of change it still causes elevations to rise and the water to get warmer.
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| This a mating pair of horseshoe crabs, one of the main things I will be looking for in my surveying |
This article is good example of why I am choosing to collect data on environmental factors such as wind speed, water temperature and salinity because there is just so little known as to why or what triggers horseshoe crabs to come to shore to spawn or what conditions they may prefer.
Courtney--have you determined how you will measure these environmental parameters?
ReplyDeleteMy question is just wondering why study horseshoe crabs? To me I would think there are more important things to know about like what is impacting fish populations since we need fish to eat. I hate to ask this but is there some value to your research? (Dr. Woodall you said we could ask anything) oh yeah, this is Samantha K. sec. 02
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