Student: Adam Rudman and Gabriel Garcia
Mentor: Professor Jennifer Mattei
Major: Biology

As part of a long term population study of the American horseshoe crab in Long Island Sound; mating data was gathered from the 2005-2007 spawning seasons across 17 beaches in Connecticut. Crabs were tagged using cinch tagging as well as U.S. Fish and Wildlife tags.  The size, sex, and condition of the crabs were recorded.  Mating behavior was observed during the spawning seasons. Single individuals with no mates, pairs, groups of three consisting of 1 female and 2 males and clusters consisting of 1 female and 2 or more males were noted.  The number of mated pairs, single males and females found varied from year to year.  An anomaly that a large proportion of single females, 968 individuals were noted during the 2006 spawning season was observed.  Furthermore, when comparing this data to data gathered in Delaware Bay, which has a significantly high population density of crabs, clusters of 2 or more males with a female were found 44% of the time. While on Connecticut beaches, polyandry was found only to be 6% on average over the three years.  It is our thought that cluster mating is so low because of the fact that the population size in Long Island Sound is so small compared to other regions. Therefore, it is our recommendation that harvesting on Connecticut beaches be changed to a male only harvest and that it is eliminated on important breeding beaches in order to help increase the population density of this ecologically important species.

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